SOME   REVOLUTIONS   AND   OTHER 
DIPLOMATIC   EXPERIENCES 


THE  RT.HON.SIR  HENRY  ELLIOT,  G.C.B. 
From  a  photograph  by  Mrs.  Robert  Benson.  Circa  [884 


SOME    REVOLUTIONS 

AND    OTHER 

DIPLOMATIC    EXPERIENCES 

BY    THE    LATE    RIGHT    HON. 

SIR    HENRY    G.    ELLIOT,    G.C.B. 

EDITED  BY  HIS  DAUGHTER 


WITH  A  PORTRAIT 


NEW   YORK 

E.    P.    DUTTON    &    COMPANY 

1922 


Printed  in  Great  Britain. 


All  rights  reserved. 


INTRODUCTION 

These  Recollections  were  commenced  soon  after 
Sir  Henry  Elliot's  retirement  from  the  Diplomatic 
Service,  and  were  printed,  for  private  circulation  only, 
in  the  year  1900.  Most  of  his  correspondence  previous 
to  1870  was  destroyed  in  that  year  by  the  fire  which 
laid  in  ashes  the  British  Embassy  at  Constantinople, 
together  with  a  great  part  of  the  city.  Fortunately, 
however,  a  diary  kept  during  the  time  of  his  missions 
to  Naples  and  Athens  was  saved,  and  his  brother  the 
Hon.  George  Elliot,  who  was  private  secretary  to  Lord 
John  Russell,  and  to  whom  he  wrote  regularly  during 
the  Neapolitan  troubles,  preserved  his  letters.  Part 
of  the  account  of  the  second  mission  to  Greece  is 
derived  from  letters  to  his  wife.  The  style  of  the  book 
is  therefore  intimate  and  colloquial,  no  thought  of 
publication  having  entered  the  writer's  mind. 

The  very  frank  expressions  of  disapproval  called 
forth  by  the  conduct  and  measures  of  some  of  the 
Italian  "  Liberators  "  may  possibly  come  as  a  shock  to 
those  whose  ardour  for  the  cause  of  Italian  Unity  is 
such  as  to  incline  them  to  overlook  the  questionable 
means  which  were  occasionally  resorted  to  on  its 
behalf.  It  is  not  the  first  great  cause  that  has  suffered 
in  repute  from  the  zeal  of  supporters  who  in  their 
enthusiasm   adopt  the  creed  that  the  end  justifies  the 

v 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

means;  religion,  liberty,  patriotism  have  all  alike 
suffered  from  this  perverted  view  of  duty,  and  it  is 
right  that  the  truth  should  always  be  impartially 
recorded,  even  at  the  cost  of  the  loss  of  some 
cherished  illusions.  Englishmen  are  apt  to  misjudge 
Continental  nations  whose  standards  are  different  from 
our  own.  An  example  of  this  difference  may  be  cited : 
when  the  doors  of  the  Neapolitan  gaols  were  opened 
Mrs.  Elliot  remonstrated  with  the  Italian  butler  for 
allowing  the  escaped  prisoners  to  loiter  round  the 
house ;  his  answer  was  typical :  "  Ma  perche  no  ?  Sono 
brava  gente;  non  sono  ladri,  sono  assassini !"  Com- 
ment is  needless. 

With  regard  to  Sir  Henry's  career  in  Turkey  a  few 
words  respecting  the  part  he  played  there  may  not 
be  out  of  place.  In  the  year  1876  there  occurred  the 
terrible  excesses  commonly  known  as  the  "  Bulgarian 
Atrocities,"  which  led  to  an  agitation  in  England 
imperilling  the  existence  of  the  Conservative  Govern- 
ment. A  full  account  of  what  took  place  will  be  found 
in  the  chapter  entitled  "  The  Bulgarian  Atrocities," 
but  further  elucidation  is  required  of  a  paragraph  in 
which  Sir  Henry  writes:  "  A  despatch  from  the  Vice- 
Consul  at  Adrianople,  which  in  the  ordinary  routine 
of  the  service  ought  at  once  to  have  been  communicated 
to  me,  was  improperly  withheld  from  me  and  given 
to  the  correspondent  of  the  Daily  News ;  the  public 
thus  got  from  a  newspaper  much  that  the  Government 
should  have  learnt  from  me  if  it  had  not  been  for  this 
unjustifiable  proceeding,  of  which  I  remained  in 
ignorance  for  two  years,  when  the  officer  who  had  so 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

misconducted  himself  was  already  dead."  In  this 
short  sentence  is  contained  the  key  to  the  subsequent 
agitation.  The  Consul-General  at  Constantinople  was 
then  Sir  Philip  Francis,  a  very  able  man  and  a  f anatica 
Liberal ;  the  personal  relations  between  the  Consulate- 
General  and  the  Embassy  were  excellent,  but  Sir 
Philip's  jealousy  of  the  higher  status  of  the  Embassy, 
and  his  dislike  of  the  Conservative  Government  and 
policy,  were  well  known  to  all.  AccordiDg  to  the 
general  rule,  Vice-Consuls  do  not  correspond  directly 
with  an  Embassy,  but  only  through  their  superintend- 
ing Consul  or  Consul-General — a  rule  the  incon- 
venience of  which  in  the  case  of  despatches  on  political 
subjects  has  caused  it  to  be  frequently  disregarded, 
but  on  the  observance  of  which  Sir  Philip  Francis 
insisted.  Early  in  1876  Vice-Consul  Dupuis  reported 
from  Adrianople  serious  excesses  committed  by  Turkish 
irregular  troops;  his  despatch  was  retained  by  Sir 
Philip  and  shown  to  Sir  Edwin  (then  Mr.)  Pears,  the 
correspondent  of  the  Daily  News.  Sir  Edwin,  himself 
the  soul  of  honour,  never  knew  that  this  document  did 
not  reach  the  Embassy.  Two  years  later  it  was  dis- 
covered by  Sir  Philip's  successor  and  sent  home, 
Sir  Philip  having  died  within  a  few  months  of  the 
suppression  of  the  despatch. 

Thus  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  kept  inadequately 
informed  and  made  the  speech  which  gave  such  offence, 
and  the  match  was  applied  to  the  gunpowder  which 
nearly  blew  the  Administration  out  of  office.  In  his 
letters  he  frequently  alludes  to  "  Sir  Henry's  lament- 
able want  of  energy  and  deficiency  of  information 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

throughout  ";*  "  Elliot's  stupidity  has  nearly  brought 
us  to  great  peril.  If  he  had  acted  with  promptitude, 
or  even  kept  himself  informed,  these  '  atrocities  ' 
might  have  been  checked.  As  it  is  he  has  brought  us 
into  a  position,  most  unjustly,  of  being  thought  to 
connive  at  them."f  There  is  no  doubt  that  Lord 
Beaconsfield  had  real  cause  for  complaint  of  lack  of 
information,  and  the  burking  of  the  news  contained  in 
Mr.  Dupuis'  despatch  put  both  him  and  Sir  Henry  in 
the  wrong  in  the  eyes  of  the  public;  but  the  staff  of 
Consuls  in  the  Near  East  was  numerically  far  too 
small  to  admit  of  an  adequate  supply  of  trustworthy 
information :  this  defect  was  later  on  fully  realised  by 
Lord  Beaconsfield,  who  then  appointed  numerous 
Consuls  throughout  the  Turkish  Empire.  Their 
number  was  subsequently  reduced  as  a  measure  of 
economy  by  the  next  Liberal  Administration,  a  course 
much  to  be  regretted,  as  the  presence  of  an  accredited 
British  agent  is  undoubtedly  a  great  protection  to  the 
subject  races. 

Sir  Henry  would  never  allow  the  story  of  the  with- 
held despatch  to  be  told  in  Lady  Francis's  lifetime, 
as  he  said  that  the  mischief  was  done,  and  Lady 
Francis  would  suffer  acutely  from  the  exposure  of  her 
husband's  conduct. 

With  regard  to  the  Constantinople  Conference  the 
facts  are  too  clearly  set  out  in  the  "  Recollections  ' 
to  need  much  comment,  but  it  may  be  remarked  that 
the  initial  mistake  was  made  when  Constantinople  was 

*  Life  of  Lord  Beaconsfield,  vol.  vi.,  p.  46. 
t  Ibid.,  vol.  vi.,  p.  51. 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

chosen  as  the  place  of  meeting.  Few  people  who  have 
not  resided  there  for  some  years  can  in  the  least  realize 
the  atmosphere  of  intrigue  which  pervades  the  city, 
or  the  difficulty  of  sifting  truth  from  untruth.  Deceit- 
fulness  is  not  the  attribute  of  one  race  only,  and  the 
newcomer  generally  becomes  the  partisan  of  the  side 
which  at  the  moment  is  provided  with  the  most 
plausible  advocate. 

The  failure  of  the  Conference  and  the  subsequent 
war  brought  about  the  defeat  of  the  Reforming  party 
in  Turkey ;  it  was  crushed,  and  its  heads  placed  at  the 
mercy  of  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid.  Sir  Henry  deplored 
this  to  the  end  of  his  life,  and  it  was  especially  bitter 
to  him  as  having  resulted  from  the  action  of  the  Liberal 
party  in  England,  who  might  have  been  expected  to 
support  any  movement  for  Reform.  The  belief  that 
every  man's  hand  was  against  them,  and  the  fact  that 
reforms  were  only  demanded  on  behalf  of  the  Christians, 
have  largely  contributed  to  foster  the  intensely 
Nationalist  feeling  exhibited  by  the  "  Young  Turk  " 
party,  a  feeling  adroitly  exploited  by  German  diplomacy, 
which,  while  perfectly  indifferent  to  the  sufferings  of 
the  Christians,  saw  in  the  Nationalist  movement  a 
ready  instrument  for  furthering  German  interests  in 
the  Near  East:  that  this  influence  was  founded  on 
tyranny  and  cemented  with  tears  mattered  nothing. 

At  Vienna  Sir  Henry's  position  was  exceptionally 
good;  a  fine  horseman,  he  greatly  enjoyed  the  oppor- 
tunity of  hunting,  and  this  sport  brought  him  into 
intimate  contact  with  the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph 
and  the  leading  Hungarian  statesmen.     At  that  time 


x  INTRODUCTION 

the  success  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  Agreement  (1867) 
was  often  cited  by  advocates  of  Home  Rule  for 
Ireland  as  an  inducement  for  applying  some  such 
arrangement  in  the  Sister  Isle,  though  in  reality  the 
conditions  were  not  analogous.  Sir  Henry,  however, 
remained  a  staunch  Unionist  and,  though  a  convinced 
Liberal,  always  preferred  to  vote  for  a  Conservative 
Parliamentary  Candidate  than  for  any  Liberal  Home 
Ruler. 

He  never  lost  his  interest  in  Russia,  where  the  first 
six  years  of  his  diplomatic  career  were  spent,  and  he 
read  every  book  that  was  published  about  that 
country,  frequently  remarking  that  "  A  revolution 
would  come  there,  though  not  in  his  lifetime,  and  that 
when  it  came  the  horrors  would  surpass  anything 
previously  known  in  history :  the  French  Revolution 
would  be  a  joke  compared  to  it." 

Sir  Henry's  last  years  were  spent  between  London 
and  Ardington  House,  Wantage,  a  charming  place 
lent  to  him  and  Lady  Elliot  by  Lord  and  Lady 
Wantage,  with  whom  they  were  on  terms  of  the  most 
affectionate  friendship.  From  Ardington  he  attended 
assiduously  to  his  duties  on  the  Bench,  and  hunted 
regularly  till  his  83rd  year,  when  he  gave  it  up  after 
the  death  of  Lady  Elliot,  to  whom  he  was  devotedly 
attached  and  with  whom  he  had  enjoyed  over  fifty 
years  of  an  ideally  happy  life.  A  man  of  singularly 
humane  and  sensitive  nature,  it  had  fallen  to  his  lot 
to  be  held  up  to  obloquy  as  a  monster  dead  to  all 
human  feelings,  but  although  he  felt  the  injustice 
acutely  he  never  allowed  it  to  embitter  him.     As  a 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

public  servant  his  one  aim  was  to  serve  his  country 
to  the  utmost  of  his  ability  and  strength,  regardless  as 
to  whether  his  views  were  popular  or  the  reverse :  what 
affected  himself  only  was  a  secondary  consideration. 
His  faculties  remained  unclouded  to  the  end  of  his 
long  life ;  but  in  his  88th  year  his  sight  began  to  fail ; 
he  could  no  longer  read,  and  became  dependent  on 
others  for  what  had  been  his  principal  delight,  the 
study  of  books;  a  severe  trial,  but  borne  without  a 
murmur,  his  only  remark  being  that  he  was  fortunate 
to  be  able  to  see  his  way  about.  He  had  no  fear  of 
death;  to  him  it  meant  reunion  with  all  he  loved  most; 
but  when  at  length  he  passed  away,  on  March  30,  1907, 
he  was  sorely  missed  by  many  who  had  never  claimed 
his  sympathy  or  wise  counsel  in  vain. 

GERTRUDE  ELLIOT. 
January  1922. 


[Note. — The  short  Introductions  to  the  Chapters, 
which  are  printed  in  smaller  type,  have  been  written 
by  the  Editor  to  enable  the  reader  to  follow  the 
narrative  without  any  effort  of  memory,  and  do  not 
pretend  to  throw  any  new  light  on  the  subject.] 


PREFACE 

These  recollections,  with  very  trifling  subsequent 
correction,  were  written  while  the  events  mentioned 
in  them  were  still  fresh  in  my  mind. 

From  the  journals  and  letters  of  which  the  extracts 
are  given  much  has  been  omitted,  but  the  rest  is 
precisely  as  it  was  hurriedly  jotted  down,  and  describes 
things  as  they  appeared  to  me  at  the  moment,  together 
with  the  impressions  they  conveyed  to  me,  whether 
these  happened  afterwards  to  be  confirmed  or  not. 

H.  E. 

July  1900. 


XI 


CONTENTS 

HAPTEK  PAGE 

I.  Australia — Naples,  1841-1860  -            -  -  1 

II.  Naples,  July-August  1860          -           -  -  25 

III.  Naples,  September  1860             -           -  -  63 

IV.  Naples,  October-November  1860           -  89 
V.  Greece— I.,  1862-1863      -            -            -  -  114 

VI.  Greece— II.,  1863             -            -           -  -  139 

VII.  Turin,  1863-1865              -            -            -  -  171 

VIII.  Turkey— I.,  1867-1876      -            -            -  -  180 

IX.  Turkey— II. :  The  Drei-Kaiser  Bund    -  -  201 

X.  Turkey — III. :  The  Salonica  Murders  -  -  219 

XL  Turkey — IV. :    The    Turkish    Reform    Move- 
ment, 1875-1876          -            -            -  -  227 

XII.  Turkey — V. :  The  Bulgarian  Atrocities,  1876  255 

XIII.  Turkey — VI.  :    The   Conference    of   Constan- 
tinople            -  274 

Index         -            -            -            -            -  -  299 


xv 


Some  Revolutions  and  Other 
Diplomatic  Experiences 

CHAPTER  I 

AUSTRALIA— NAPLES,   1841-1860 

[In  May  1859,  when  Mr.  Elliot  was  appointed  to  Naples,  the 
disturbances  and  excitement  which  had  prevailed  in  Italy  ever 
since  the  revolutionary  risings  of  1848-9  had  reached  their 
climax.  Italy's  first  general  effort  for  freedom  had  failed,  the 
Austrian  Archdukes  had  returned  to  their  Duchies,  Pope 
Pius  IX.  had  renounced  all  Liberal  principles,  and  a  Bourbon 
Prince  married  to  an  Austrian  Archduchess  had  ruled  at 
Naples  without  regard  to  justice  or  humanity.  All  hope  of  a 
federation  of  Italian  States  was  abandoned,  but  only  to  be 
replaced  by  the  more  practical  scheme  of  a  United  Italy 
under  the  sceptre  of  the  House  of  Savoy. 

In  1853  Count  Cavour  had  become  Prime  Minister  at  Turin, 
and  that  far-seeing  statesman  secured  a  voice  in  the  councils 
of  Europe  by  sending  a  contingent  of  Sardinian  troops  to  the 
support  of  France  and  England  in  the  Crimea;  in  especial  he 
gained  the  ear  of  the  Emperor  Louis  Napoleon,  and  obtained 
from  him  in  1858  a  secret  promise  of  support  should  war  again 
break  out  against  Austria.  The  tortuous  policy  pursued  by 
the  French  Foreign  Office  with  regard  to  Neapolitan  Affairs 
is  explained  by  the  difficult  position  in  which  the  Emperor 
found  himself  at  home.  On  the  one  side  he  posed  as  the 
champion  of  liberty  and  hoped  to  bind  Italy  to  himself  by 
the  bonds  of  gratitude,  on  the  other  he  was  checked  by  the 
strong  Catholic  feeling  of  many  of  his  subjects,  a  feeling  most 
prevalent  in  the  Empress's  entourage  ;  and  although  he  prob- 
ably sincerely  wished  for  a  certain  measure  of  liberty  and  good 
government  in  Italy,  he  by  no  means  intended  to  set  up  a 
State  sufficiently  powerful  to  act  as  a  counterpoise  to  France. 
Such  was  the  condition  of  affairs  in  1859  when  Mr.  Elliot 
arrived  in  Naples  after  the  death  of  King  Ferdinand  II.,  the 
hated  "  Bomba";  he  was  charged  with  the  British  Govern 
ment's    congratulations  to  the  young  King  Francis  on  his 

o 


2  NAPLES  [1836 

accession,  coupled  with  serious  warnings  and  advice,  destined 
to  be  disregarded,  as  such  advice  generally  is  when  not  backed 
by  force.  Many  years  afterwards  King  Francis  regretfully 
observed  to  an  Austrian  friend:  "If  I  had  followed  Elliot's 
advice  I  should  still  be  on  my  throne  !"] 

It  falls  to  the  lot  of  few  of  my  cloth  to  be  present 
at  so  many  stirring  events  as  passed  before  me  in  the 
different  countries  where  I  served  after  becoming 
Minister.  The  dethronement  of  four  Sovereigns — 
accompanied  in  one  case  by  the  extinction  of  an 
ancient  dynasty  and  kingdom,  and  followed  in  another 
by  the  tragical  death  of  the  deposed  monarch ;  the 
election  of  a  new  King  in  a  third  case ;  the  assassination 
of  two  Cabinet  Ministers  while  sitting  in  Council,  and 
the  murder  of  two  Consuls  by  a  fanatical  mob — make 
up  such  a  goodly  list  of  sensational  occurrences,  of  all 
of  which  I  had  better  opportunities  than  almost  anyone 
of  knowing  the  details,  that  I  am  tempted  to  leave 
some  of  my  reminiscences  of  them  behind  me. 

It  was  by  the  merest  chance  that  I  came  to  enter  the 
diplomatic  profession,  as  it  was  about  the  last  that 
would  have  been  deliberately  chosen  for  me,  for  I  well 
remember  that,  while  I  was  growing  up  and  asked  my 
father  what  he  proposed  that  I  should  do,  he  used  to 
evade  the  question  and  only  answered  that  the  army 
was  a  wretched  profession  and  diplomacy  a  worse. 

So  I  went  to  Cambridge  without  a  notion  of  what  line 
I  was  to  follow,  and,  to  say  the  truth,  troubling  myself 
little  with  thoughts  of  the  future,  quite  content  to  live 
"  au  jour  le  jour,"  thoroughly  idle,  but  in  no  respect 
dissipated,  not  reading  but  making  neither  debts  nor 
bad  friends. 

I  had  been  about  eighteen  months  at  the  University 
when,  in  the  middle  of  the  Long  Vacation  of  1836,  my 
father  suddenly  proposed  to  me  that  I  should  go  to 
Australia,  to  which  Sir  John  Franklin,  the  great  Arctic 
explorer,  was  about  to  sail  as  G  overnor  of  Van  Diemen's 
Land,  as  Tasmania  was  then  called. 


IN  VAN  DIEMEN'S  LAND  3 

With  what  precise  object  I  was  sent  I  never  quite 
made  out,  for  before  I  sailed  my  father  never  explained 
his  views  to  me,  and  a  letter  which  he  put  into  my 
hands  on  the  last  morning  did  not  say  much  more 
than  that  if  I  was  steady  I  "  could  not  fail  to  do  well," 
and  hinted  at  money  to  be  sent  out  to  me  later  for 
investment;  and  my  belief  is  that  he  in  no  small  degree 
shared  the  vague  impression,  so  general  at  that  time, 
that  anyone  going  to  Australia  could,  if  he  liked,  find 
the  means  of  making  his  fortune  in  some  way  or  other. 

However,  be  this  as  it  may,  his  decision  was  the  best 
possible  thing  for  me,  for,  if  I  did  not  make  my  fortune, 
I  changed  an  idle  life  for  one  of  active  occupation  and 
interest,  and  acquired  experience  and  useful  habits. 
He  recommended  me  to  Sir  John  Franklin,  one  of  the 
finest  characters  that  ever  lived,  who  on  the  passage 
appointed  me  his  civil  A.D.C.,  and  about  a  year  later 
his  private  secretary,  thus  bringing  me  into  real  work, 
keeping  me  in  his  house  all  the  time,  and  treating  me 
in  every  respect  as  if  I  had  been  his  own  son. 

I  did  not  hesitate  a  moment  in  agreeing  to  my 
father's  proposal,  for  I  was  nineteen,  eager  to  be  doing 
something  for  myself,  and  the  chance  of  seeing  a  new 
world  had  an  irresistible  attraction — and  a  new  world 
in  every  sense  of  the  word  it  really  was  at  that  time. 

When  I  landed  at  Hobart  Town  at  the  end  of  1836, 
Van  Diemen's  Land  had  existed  as  a  colony  for  barely 
twenty-five  years,  and  the  entire  population  of  the 
island  was  still  under  40,000,  of  which  the  half  either 
were  or  had  been  convicts.  The  city  of  Melbourne, 
with  its  present  half -million  of  inhabitants,  consisted 
when  I  saw  it  of  some  dozen  or  so  of  brick  or  stone 
houses,  the  rest  being  mere  "  wattle  and  daub  ' 
shanties;  but  I  gave  some  of  my  Australian  recol- 
lections in  an  article  in  the  November  number  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century  of  1889,  and  I  do  not  propose  to 
repeat  them. 

When  I  got  home  after  four  years'  absence  my  future 


4  NAPLES  [i84i 

was  as  uncertain  as  ever,  but  on  going  to  see  one  of 
my  best  Cambridge  friends,  who  was  Precis  Writer  at 
the  Foreign  Office,  he  told  me  that  he  was  just  going 
to  resign"  whereupon  I  got  my  father  to  go  to  Lord 
Palmerston,  who  gave  me  the  place  right  off,  and  the 
next  year,  before  leaving  office  in  1841,  he  appointed 
me  a  paid  attache  at  St.  Petersburg,  and  I  was  fairly 
launched  in  the  diplomatic  service.  I  remained  there 
six  years,  and  was  then  made  Secretary  of  Legation, 
first  at  The  Hague  and  then  at  Vienna,  where  I  received 
my  promotion  as  Minister  at  a  moment  when  I  least 
expected  it.  In  those  days  party  politics  entered  a 
good  deal  into  diplomatic  appointments,  and  when  in 
the  spring  of  1858  Lord  Palmerston's  Government 
were  defeated  on  his  Conspiracy  Bill,  and  had  to  make 
way  for  the  Tories,  my  prospects  did  not  appear 
brilliant,  and  it  was  a  complete  surprise  to  me  when 
Lord  Malmesbury,  on  becoming  Foreign  Secretary, 
at  once  appointed  me  Minister  to  Denmark,  where, 
however,  I  was  not  destined  to  remain  long;  for  in 
little  more  than  a  twelvemonth  a  succession  of  fortunate 
accidents  landed  me  in  the  Legation  of  Naples — at 
that  time  the  most  enviable  post  in  the  whole  diplo- 
matic service,  and  which,  thanks  to  Garibaldi,  was 
also  soon  to  become  the  one  most  full  of  interest  and 
excitement. 

I  had  been  home  on  a  short  leave,  and  the  day  before 
I  was  to  return  to  Copenhagen,  when  I  called  at  the 
Foreign  Office  to  say  good-bye  to  Lord  Malmesbury, 
he  told  me  that  he  had  just  heard  of  the  death  of 
Ferdinand,  the  King  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  and  that  he 
wanted  me  first  to  go  at  once  to  Naples  to  congratulate 
Francis  II.  on  his  accession,  and  to  re-establish  the 
diplomatic  relations  which  we  and  the  French  had 
broken  off  three  years  before,  when  Bomba  had 
snapped  his  fingers  at  our  remonstrances  against  his 
misgo  vernmen  t . 

My  mission  was  to  be  a  special  and  complimentary 


APPOINTED  TO  NAPLES  5 

one,  not  intended  to  last  more  than  a  few  weeks,  and 
Lord  Malmesbury  quickly  appointed  Sir  Arthur 
Magenis  as  permanent  Minister;  but  my  lucky  star 
was  in  the  ascendant,  and  a  change  of  Government 
in  England  put  an  end  to  that  arrangement :  Lord 
Palmerston  became  Prime  Minister  and  Lord  John 
Russell  Foreign  Secretary,  and  their  views  on  Italian 
politics  were  so  diametrically  opposed  to  those  of  their 
predecessors,  which  Magenis — a  codino  of  the  codini — ■ 
was  known  to  share,  that  the  appointment  was 
cancelled,  and  after  being  offered  to  Lord  Napier,  who 
fortunately  refused  it,  it  was  given  to  me. 

When  I  left  England  on  this  special  mission  in 
May  1859,  the  war  of  France  and  Sardinia  against 
Austria  had  just  begun,  and  Lord  Malmesbury 's 
feelings  were  so  strongly  on  the  side  of  the  latter  that 
he  was  afraid  lest  the  young  Sovereign  of  the  Two 
Sicilies  might  be  induced  to  throw  in  his  lot  with  the 
Liberal  party,  which  was  calling  for  an  alliance  with 
Victor  Emmanuel,  and  his  very  last  words  to  me  were 
an  injunction  to  use  every  endeavour  to  dissuade  the 
Neapolitan  Government  from  joining  the  allies.  If 
there  had  ever  been  a  chance  of  their  doing  so  it  was 
past  before  I  reached  Naples,  so  that  I  was  not  called 
upon  to  act  upon  instructions  which  it  would  have 
been  very  repugnant  to  me  to  execute,  though  there 
is  little  doubt  that  if  King  Francis  had  then  frankly 
and  fairly  adopted  the  course  so  much  dreaded  by 
Lord  Malmesbury  he  would  have  averted  the  fall  of 
his  dynasty.  Lord  Palmerston  and  Lord  John,  with  a 
much  truer  appreciation  of  the  movement  for  con- 
stitutional reform  that  was  going  on  throughout  Italy, 
and  of  the  discontent  prevailing  in  the  south,  clearly 
perceived  that  a  persistence  in  his  father's  system  of 
government  must  before  long  lead  to  the  loss  of  his 
throne,  and  I  was  not  backward  in  following  their 
instructions  to  do  all  in  my  power  to  impress  upon  the 
King  and  his  Ministers  that  a  refusal  to  satisfy  the 


6  NAPLES  [1859 

just  expectations  of  the  people  would  be  followed 
by  their  ruin. 

Naples  and  Sicily  were  at  that  time  entirely  governed 
by  an  irresponsible  police,  uncontrolled  by  any  form 
of  law,  and  regardless  of  the  most  elementary  considera- 
tions of  justice.  Men  by  hundreds  were  arrested, 
exiled,  or  imprisoned  for  years,  not  only  without  going 
through  any  kind  of  trial,  but  often  without  being  even 
informed  of  what  or  by  whom  they  were  accused,  or 
being  allowed  the  opportimity  of  saying  a  word  to 
explain  or  refute  the  accusation;  but  the  strong-willed 
Ferdinand,  backed  by  a  powerful  body  of  Swiss  or 
Bavarian  mercenaries,  and  assured  of  the  support  of 
Austria  in  resisting  the  demands  of  his  people  for 
reform,  had  been  able  to  prevent  the  general  discontent 
from  breaking  into  open  insurrection. 

It  was  evident,  from  the  outset,  that  this  system 
could  not  be  maintained  by  his  feeble  successor, 
Francis  II.  His  intelligence,  naturally  of  a  low  order, 
had  not  been  improved  by  an  education  intentionally 
neglected  by  his  step-mother,  the  second  wife  of 
Ferdinand,  an  Austrian  Archduchess,  who  shortly  be- 
fore the  death  of  her  husband  had  been  more  than  sus- 
pected of  a  design  of  getting  Francis  set  aside  in  order 
to  secure  the  succession  for  her  own  son,  Count  Trani. 

She  was,  however,  a  strong-minded,  masterful 
woman,  who,  in  spite  of  her  notorious  want  of  affection 
for  her  step-son,  had  succeeded  in  establishing  her 
authority  over  him,  and  in  convincing  him  that  his 
father  had  been  the  incarnation  of  wisdom,  and  that 
dissimulation  was  the  first  quality  of  king-craft. 

He  had  none  of  that  generosity  of  nature  which 
might  have  prompted  him  to  appeal  to  his  people, 
asking  them  for  their  support  and  promising  to  redress 
their  grievances,  at  a  moment  when  an  impressionable 
population  like  the  Neapolitans  would  have  been  quite 
ready  to  look  kindly  on  their  young  Sovereign  if  they 
had  seen  a  symptom  of  his  looking  kindly  upon  them. 


NEAPOLITAN  COURT  7 

An  entire  want  of  sympathy  or  feeling  for  others 
was  visible  in  a  cold  manner,  unlike  everything  you 
would  wish  to  see  in  a  young  man  of  twenty-three, 
and  it  was  painfully  exhibited  before  his  whole  Court 
on  the  day  on  which  he  received  the  homage  of  all  the 
great  people  of  his  kingdom.  He  stood  on  a  carpet 
in  front  of  the  throne,  and  as  the  lieges  passed  before 
him  they  kissed  his  hand,  which  he  did  not  take  the 
trouble  to  raise,  allowing  it,  when  they  had  kissed  it, 
to  fall  back  by  his  side  as  if  it  had  been  the  hand  of  a 
doll,  while  he  did  not  even  look  at  the  person  who  was 
doing  homage,  but  peered  about  examining  those  who 
were  coming  next.  One  very  infirm  old  man  caught  his 
foot  in  the  carpet  and  fell  flat  on  his  face  close  to  the 
feet  of  the  King,  who  neither  stirred  to  help  him  nor 
allowed  a  muscle  of  his  face  to  move  while  the  poor  old 
fellow,  awkwardly  and  with  difficulty,  scrambled  up 
and  passed  him  without  a  word  from  the  King  of 
condolence  for  his  mishap  or  of  enquiry  whether  he 
was  hurt.  It  afforded  an  insight  into  the  King's  dis- 
position, and  it  must  have  impressed  many  of  his 
subjects  who  witnessed  the  scene  much  as  it  did  me, 
when  I  remarked  to  my  neighbour  that  "  that  young 
man  will  finish  badly." 

We  got  to  Naples  in  the  very  height  of  the  war  in 
Lombardy,  the  battle  of  Magenta  being  fought  on 
June  4,  the  day  I  believe  of  our  arrival,  and  three  weeks 
later  Solferino  brought  the  war  to  a  close,  and  was 
followed  before  the  middle  of  July  by  the  Peace  of 
Villafranca,  which,  incomplete  and  unsatisfactory  as 
it  was,  put  an  end  to  the  preponderance  of  Austria  in 
Italy,  where  it  had  been  disastrously  exercised  in 
opposing  all  attempts  to  bring  about  the  much-needed 
constitutional  reforms. 

The  clauses  of  the  treaty  under  which  Tuscany, 
Parma  and  Modena  were  to  revert  to  their  respective 
Grand  Dukes  were  defeated  by  the  prompt  action  of 
the  Sardinian  Government  in  provoking  a  unanimous 


8  NAPLES  [1S59 

expression  of  the  feelings  of  the  populations,  which 
made  the  execution  of  the  arrangement  impossible, 
and  the  incorporation  of  the  Duchies  as  well  as  of 
Lombard)'  in  the  kingdom  of  Victor  Emmanuel  was 
successfully  carried  out. 

From  that  moment  some  of  the  more  daring  spirits 
began  to  look  upon  a  United  Italy  as  a  possibility,  but 
these  belonged  exclusively  to  the  republican  followers 
of  Mazzini,  and  at  that  time  the  strongest  of  the 
Neapolitan  Liberals  would  have  been  found  absolutely 
unanimous  in  repudiating  with  indignation  the  notion 
of  their  absorption  into  the  comparatively  small 
northern  kingdom  of  Sardinia. 

The  reforming  party  at  Naples  wished  to  maintain 
the  kingdom  of  the  Two  Sicilies  as  an  independent  Con- 
stitutional state,  while  the  Sicilians,  hating  not  only  the 
Bourbon  dynasty  but  the  connection  with  Naples, 
wanted  complete  independence,  with  a  Sovereign  of 
their  own;  and  it  was  not  till  after  the  extraordinary 
success  of  Garibaldi  that  all  parties  united  in  regarding 
incorporation  with  Piedmont  as  the  only  issue  left 
open  to  them. 

When  King  Ferdinand  died  it  had  been  hoped  that 
there  would  be  at  least  some  relaxation  of  the  system 
he  had  maintained,  and  some  disposition  to  govern 
with  a  little  regard  for  law;  and  when  it  was  seen  that 
there  was  no  appearance  of  any  improvement  the 
discontent  among  all  classes  became  more  intense  and 
more  dangerous. 

Among  the  many  evil  growths  springing  from  long 
misgovernment  there  was  that  singular  institution 
called  the  Camorra.  There  was  no  class,  high  or  low, 
that  had  not  its  representatives  among  the  members  of 
the  society,  which  was  a  vast  organised  association 
for  the  extortion  of  blackmail  in  every  conceivable 
shape  and  form.  Officials,  officers  of  the  King's 
household,  the  police  and  others  were  affiliated  with 
the  most  desperate  of  the  criminal  classes  in  carrying 


CAMORRA  9 

out  the  depredations,  and  none  was  too  high  or  too  low 
to  escape  them.  If  a  petition  was  to  be  presented  to 
the  Sovereign  or  to  a  Minister  it  had  to  be  paid  for; 
at  every  gate  of  the  town  Camorriste  were  stationed  to 
exact  a  toll  on  each  cart  or  donkey  load  brought  to 
market  by  the  peasants ;  and,  on  getting  into  a  hackney 
carrosel  in  the  street,  I  have  seen  one  of  the  band  run 
up  and  get  his  fee  from  the  driver.  No  one  thought  of 
refusing  to  pay,  for  the  consequences  of  a  refusal  were 
too  well  known,  anyone  rash  enough  to  demur  being 
apt  to  be  found  soon  after  mysteriously  stabbed  by 
some  unknown  individual,  whom  the  police  were 
careful  never  to  discover.  The  association  was  rich 
and  did  a  nourishing  business,  for,  though  the  con- 
tributions levied  by  the  lower  members  might  be  in 
pennies  or  halfpennies,  those  taken  by  the  higher  ones 
were  on  a  different  scale. 

But  while  the  police  connived  at  ordinary  criminals, 
their  zeal  and  activity  knew  no  bounds  in  hunting  down 
supposed  political  offenders,  and  they  treated  as  such 
all  those  who  held  opinions  considered  objectionable, 
although  not  accused  of  any  illegal  act.  One  day,  in  a 
conversation  with  the  Minister,  when  he  had  frequently 
alluded  to  the  revolutionists,  upon  my  asking  him 
what  he  meant  by  the  term,  he  naively  defined  it  as 
meaning  "  all  those  who  wished  to  make  changes  not 
approved  of  by  the  Government."  Thus  every  man 
who  advocated  any  reform  of  prevailing  abuses  was 
regarded  as  a  conspirator,  and  in  order  to  deal  with 
such  persons  a  list  had  been  made  of  them,  and,  under 
the  name  of  the  Attendibili,  they  were  placed  at  the 
absolute  discretion  of  the  police  of  their  districts. 
The  Attendibili  were  of  all  classes,  from  the  large 
landed  proprietors  and  tradesmen  down  to  the  peasant, 
and  were  said  to  number  some  150,000  persons.  They 
could  not  move  from  the  rayon  assigned  to  them: 
the  proprietor  could  not  visit  his  neighbour,  and 
the   peasant   could    not    carry  his   produce   to   the 


10  NAPLES  [1859 

market  town  if  it  lay  beyond  his  bounds.  On  the 
slightest  suspicion,  or  even  without  it,  this  sur- 
veillance could  be  changed  to  close  imprisonment  at 
the  mere  caprice  of  the  police,  from  which  there  was 
no  appeal. 

Another  frightful  abuse  was  the  arrest  and  im- 
prisonment of  men  on  secret  private  denunciation, 
more  especially  on  that  of  the  priests,  who,  when  they 
wanted  to  get  a  man  out  of  the  way,  sometimes  with 
the  most  infamous  object,  accused  him  of  bestemmia 
or  blasphemy,  and  on  the  fall  of  the  monarchy  the 
number  who  were  found  in  prison  under  this  head 
almost  exceeded  belief,  bestemmia  being,  in  most  cases, 
only  another  name  for  priestly  denunciation. 

Anyone  of  influence  could  get  a  person  arrested,  and 
I  was  once  very  unwittingly  the  cause  of  a  man  being 
put  in  prison  for  a  fortnight,  where  no  doubt  I  could 
have  kept  him  as  long  as  I  chose.  An  English  actress 
at  one  of  the  theatres  had  come  to  me  to  complain 
that  her  manager  would  not  pay  her  according  to  her 
engagement,  and  asked  me  to  intercede  for  her,  which 
I  did  by  requesting  the  Director-General  of  Theatres 
to  have  her  complaint  examined  into.  About  a  fort- 
night later  another  woman  called  in  great  distress,  and, 
on  being  asked  what  she  wanted,  said  she  had  come  to 
beseech  me  not  to  keep  her  husband  any  longer  in 
prison !  And  when  I  asked  what,  in  the  name  of 
fortune,  she  meant,  she  sobbed  out  that  her  husband 
was  the  manager  of  a  theatre,  and  had  been  shut  up 
by  my  desire  on  the  complaint  of  one  of  his  actresses, 
but  for  the  sake  of  herself  and  children  she  hoped  I 
would  not  keep  him  any  longer  in  prison.  It  was  an 
excellent  example  of  the  way  things  were  done  at 
Naples  in  those  days,  and  no  doubt  the  Director- 
General  thought  he  had  taken  the  simplest  way  of 
obliging  the  British  Minister,  without  considering  it  at 
all  necessary  to  make  an  enquiry  into  the  merits  of 
the  case;  though  the  fact  of  the  complaining  actress 


SECRET  DENUNCIATIONS  11 

being  a  very  pretty  woman  may  perhaps  have  in- 
fluenced him  as  much  as  my  recommendation. 

The  expiration  of  a  condemned  prisoner's  sentence 
gave  no  security  that  he  would  be  released,  as  I  dis- 
covered upon  an  occasion  when  I  had  complained  that 
a  British  subject  was  not  discharged  when  he  had 
completed  the  term  of  imprisonment  to  which  he  had 
been  sentenced  for  a  felony.  The  Minister  had  the 
man  released  at  my  demand,  but  explained  that  there 
was  nothing  irregular  in  his  detention,  as  at  Naples 
'  no  prisoner  was  discharged  on  the  expiration  of  his 
sentence  unless  the  police  considered  that  it  might  be 
done  without  disadvantage."  Practically,  therefore, 
the  shortest  possible  term  to  which  a  man  could  be 
sentenced  might  be  indefinitely  prolonged  at  the  mere 
discretion  of  the  police,  and  the  Minister  who  explained 
these  rules  seemed  quite  incapable  of  perceiving  their 
monstrosity. 

Such  was  the  system  which  the  Neapolitan  people 
had  groaned  under  during  the  reign  of  Ferdinand,  and 
from  which  they  hoped  to  be  relieved  on  the  accession 
of  his  successor ;  and  when  it  appeared  that  there  was 
no  change  to  be  expected,  it  was  not  difficult  to  foresee 
that  their  patience  must  soon  be  exhausted. 

Almost  from  the  first  day  of  my  arrival  at  Naples 
I  began  to  urge  the  Ministers  either  to  bring  to  trial 
or  to  liberate  the  people  who  had  been  lying  for  years 
in  prison  uncondemned  and  untried,  but  I  totally 
failed  in  my  endeavours.  When  pressed,  they  ad- 
mitted without  the  slightest  hesitation  or  shame  that 
these  men  were  not  tried  because  there  was  not 
sufficient  evidence  on  which  it  would  be  possible  to 
convict  them,  and  that  their  detention  was  contrary 
to  law;  but  as  to  releasing  them  in  consequence  of  the 
illegality  of  their  imprisonment — oh,  that  was  quite 
another  affair,  and  could  not  be  thought  of. 

The  Government  were  not  content  with  refusing  to 
let   out   the   persons   illegally   imprisoned   by   King 


12  NAPLES  [1859 

Ferdinand,  but  continued  to  carry  on  arbitrary  arrests 
as  before,  and  amongst  the  persons  taken  up  at  that 
time  there  was  a  young  man  of  the  name  of  Pandola, 
whose  mother,  a  sister  of  Mat.  Higgins,*  well  known 
in  London  as  the  Gentle  Giant,  had  asked  me  to  inter- 
cede for  him,  and  she  came  afterwards  to  thank  me 
for  the  improvement  in  his  treatment  that  I  had 
succeeded  in  getting.  She  told  me  that  for  thirty-five 
days  after  his  arrest,  for  which  no  cause  was  assigned, 
he,  being  like  his  uncle  the  giant,  about  seven  feet  high, 
had  been  shut  up  in  a  wretched  subterranean  cell, 
eight  feet  square,  in  which,  for  the  first  eighteen  days, 
he  was  not  even  allowed  a  book;  seeing  absolutely  no 
one,  his  food  being  thrust  into  the  cell  by  the  gaoler  once 
in  the  twenty-four  hours;  and  without  his  being  told 
what  he  was  accused  of  or  who  were  his  accusers.  In 
consequence  of  my  representations  he  was  at  last 
removed  to  better  quarters,  and  ultimately  released 
without  ever  being  questioned  or  brought  to  trial ;  but 
there  was  nothing  in  the  least  unusual  in  this  case,  for 
there  were  numbers  of  similar  ones,  only  with  the  differ- 
ence that  few  of  them  were  as  fortunate  as  Pandola 
in  having  someone  to  interest  himself  about  them. 

The  Government,  however,  found  that  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  to  do  something  to  diminish  the 
general  discontent,  and,  as  the  list  of  the  Attendibili, 
affecting  as  it  did  so  many  persons,  caused  more  of  it 
than  any  of  the  other  abuses,  and  was  moreover  so 
manifestly  illegal,  it  was  pompously  announced  that 
the  system  should  be  abolished. 

When  the  royal  decree  was  published  giving  effect 
to  this  decision,  I  thought  a  real  step  towards  improve- 
ment had  been  taken,  and  I  innocently  congratulated 
myself  in  having  had  a  hand  in  bringing  it  about.  But 
I  was  then  still  strange  to  the  ways  of  Neapolitan 
Ministers,  and  it  soon  began  to  be  whispered  that  no 
change  had  taken  place  in  the  position  of  the  Alten- 

*  Also  known  as  Jacob  Omnium. 


COUNT  BUOL  13 

dibili,  and  it  at  last  oozed  out  that  the  royal  decree  in 
their  favour  had  been  forwarded  to  the  prefects  of  the 
provinces  accompanied  by  a  confidential  ministerial 
letter  which  practically  nullified  it.  The  decree  had 
been  a  mere  sham;  designed  to  throw  dust  in  the  eyes 
of  the  uninformed  part  of  the  public  and  of  the  foreign 
representatives,  who  with  a  great  nourish  of  trumpets 
duly  reported  to  their  Governments  the  proof  given 
by  King  Francis  of  his  wish  to  remove  any  abuse  com- 
plained of  by  his  people,  while  in  reality  he  had  not 
the  slightest  intention  of  abandoning  the  system  of 
governing  the  country  solely  by  a  police,  irresponsible 
and  set  above  the  law. 

The  summer  and  winter  of  1859  passed  without  the 
occurrence  of  anything  serious,  and,  though  there  was 
plenty  to  indicate  the  existence  of  dangerous  discon- 
tent, the  Camarilla  which  surrounded  the  King  con- 
tinued to  live  in  a  fool's  paradise,  and  persons  who  ought 
to  have  known  better  shared  their  sense  of  security. 

Among  the  people  who  visited  Naples  at  that  time 
was  Count  Buol*  Schauenstein,  the  late  Austrian 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  who  ought  to  have  known 
more  than  anyone  about  the  state  of  affairs  in  Italy, 
and  he  declared  to  me  that  he  had  been  astonished 
to  find  how  entirely  satisfactory  everything  was. 
He  was  of  course  prepared  to  find  that  there  was 
immense  exaggeration  in  the  English  accounts  of 
misgovernment  and  discontent;  but  he  was  not  pre- 
pared to  learn,  as  he  now  had,  that  there  was  really 
neither  general  discontent  nor  any  kind  of  misgovern- 
ment likely  to  lead  to  it.  He  had,  he  said,  been  a  week 
at  Naples  making  enquiries,  and  he  was  perfectly 
satisfied  from  all  he  had  heard  that  there  was  nothing 
to  justify  any  apprehension  of  coming  trouble  for  the 

*  Karl  Ferdinand  Count  Buol  von  Schauenstein,  Austrian  states- 
man. Represented  Austria  at  the  Dresden  Conference  of  1850-51, 
and  again  at  Vienna  in  1855.  Was  for  many  years  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs.     Belonged  to  the  Metternich  school  of  politics. 


14  NAPLES  [i860 

new  Sovereign,  and  he  seemed  to  have  a  contemptuous 
pity  for  me  when  I  expressed  a  very  contrary  opinion. 

Count  Buol's  doubts  upon  another  subject  had  also 
been  removed.  He  said  that  he  had  not  known  what 
to  think  of  the  annual  miracle  of  the  liquefaction  of 
the  blood  of  St.  Januarius,  and  had  been  rather  in- 
clined to  look  upon  it  as  a  trick;  but  he  had  now 
witnessed  it,  and  was  fully  satisfied  of  the  reality  of  the 
miracle,  and  that  all  imposture  was  impossible  ! 

In  fact,  everything  was  perfect  in  this  model 
monarchy,  in  the  opinion  of  Count  Buol,  scarcely  six 
months  before  the  breaking  up  of  the  Neapolitan 
kingdom,  and  when  it  was  already  evident  to  everyone 
who  chose  to  enquire  for  himself  that  the  whole  con- 
cern was  rotten  to  the  very  core;  but  if  he,  who  had 
played  a  great  part  in  European  politics,  and  was 
certainly  not  wanting  in  intelligence,  allowed  himself 
to  be  persuaded  by  the  Camarilla  of  the  excellence 
of  the  Government  and  the  contentedness  of  the 
kingdom,  it  is  scarcely  to  be  wondered  at  if  the  King, 
with  his  narrow  mind,  was  lulled  into  a  fatal  security. 

Count  Buol's  opinions,  as  those  of  the  late  Foreign 
Minister  of  Austria,  would  naturally  have  great 
weight  with  the  King,  and  it  cannot  be  doubted  that 
he  urged  His  Majesty  to  pay  no  heed  to  the  recom- 
mendations of  those  who  were  counselling  the  adoption 
of  liberal  reforms ;  but  while  the  Government  professed 
to  feel  no  anxiety  they  stimulated  the  police  to  greater 
activity  than  ever,  and  in  December  they  issued  a 
secret  order  directing  the  Intendants  of  the  provinces 
to  "  proceed  without  the  least  hesitation  to  arrest 
anyone  who  may  afford  grounds  of  guilt  and  even  of 
simple  suspicion,"  and  they  were  told  to  show  by  their 
acts  their  obedience  to  these  instructions. 

The  Intendants  were  not  backward  in  acting  in  the 
way  that  was  expected  of  them  by  those  on  whose 
favour  they  depended,  and  unmotived  arrests  became 
more  frequent  than  ever.      At  the  beginning  of  March 


ARREST  OF  LIBERALS  15 

1860  I  wrote  that  the  Government  no  longer  stopped 
short  at  arresting  persons  upon  whom  grounds  of 
suspicion  might  rest,  but  had  determined  to  arrest  men 
free  of  all  suspicion  excepting  that  of  holding  liberal 
opinions.  A  large  batch  had  been  ordered  to  be  seized, 
of  whom  some  had  been  able  to  conceal  themselves, 
and  among  them  were  no  less  than  five  of  my  own 
friends  or  acquaintances,  men  of  the  highest  station, 
and  certainly  not  conspirators  or  revolutionists, 
though  holding  Liberal,  and  most  of  them  very 
moderate  Liberal,  opinions — Prince  Torella,  his  brother 
the  Marquis  de  Bella,  Prince  Camporeale,  Duke  Proto, 
and  the  Marquis  Vulcano. 

When  I  spoke  of  these  arrests  to  the  Minister  the 
next  day,  he  said  that  it  had  been  done  to  prevent  a 
contemplated  demonstration  in  favour  of  annexation 
to  Sardinia,  and,  upon  my  asking  whether  he  or  anyone 
else  could  believe  that  a  man  like  Prince  Torella  would 
be  a  leader  in  such  a  demonstration,  he  at  once  replied 
that  he  did  not,  and  that  the  Prince's  arrest  had  been 
an  "  error,"  but  that  he  had  since  been  released. 

I  begged  him  not  to  talk  to  me  about  a  man  like 
Prince  Torella  being  arrested  by  mistake ;  the  Govern- 
ment no  doubt  felt  that  they  had  committed  a  mistake, 
but  it  was  that  of  miscalculating  the  effect  of  their 
ill-advised  measure  which  now  forced  them  to  retrace 
their  steps. 

The  Minister  having  then  authorised  me  to  convey 
to  some  of  those  who  were  eluding  the  police  the 
assurance  that  they  should  not  be  further  molested,  I 
left  them,  saying  that  "  As  I  felt  convinced  that  the 
destruction  both  of  the  King  and  of  his  dynasty  was 
inevitable  unless  wiser  counsels  were  listened  to,  I 
would  beg  him  to  request  for  me  the  honour  of  an 
audience  of  His  Majesty,  in  order  that,  when  the 
catastrophe  arrived,  I  might  not  have  upon  my 
conscience  the  reflection  that  I  had  not  done  all  in  my 
power  to  save  an  inexperienced  Sovereign  from  ruin." 


16  NAPLES  [i860 

When  I  got  my  audience  I  spoke  to  the  King  as  plainly 
as  I  had  spoken  to  his  Minister,  and  I  did  all  I  could 
to  open  his  eyes  to  the  real  state  of  things,  and  to  the 
dangers  that  were  approaching  him,  but  he  could  not 
be  brought  to  see  that  there  were  any  grievances  of 
which  his  people  could  complain,  or  any  discontent 
except  among  a  few  factious,  ill-disposed  individuals. 
He  showed  no  disposition  to  govern  otherwise  than 
through  his  police,  and  expressed,  and  I  believe  felt, 
perfect  confidence  in  his  security. 

When  King  Francis  succeeded  to  the  throne  our 
Government  were  anxious  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
Kingdom  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  and  for  the  avoidance 
of  a  revolution  likely  to  endanger  the  general  peace, 
which  was  not  to  be  hoped  for  if  the  brutal  police 
despotism  was  continued;  and  in  the  interest  of  the 
new  King  I  was  instructed  to  protest  urgently  against 
it,  while  carefully  avoiding  every  appearance  of  dicta- 
tion, and  giving  no  opinion  as  to  the  time  or  mode  of 
restoring  to  animation  the  Constitution  that  had  long 
been  suspended. 

Lord  John  Russell's  despatches  were  admirable.  He 
had  hardly  been  a  fortnight  in  office  when  he  wrote: 
"  You  will  press  strongly  on  the  Minister  the  necessity 
of  abolishing  as  soon  as  possible  the  despotism  of  the 
police.  Men  may  differ  about  the  merits  of  repre- 
sentative constitutions;  but  there  can  be  no  difference 
of  opinion  among  enlightened  men  about  the  necessity 
of  a  due,  impartial  and  speedy  administration  of 
justice." 

Again,  on  July  9  he  wrote:  "  Her  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment concur  in  the  opinion  you  express  of  the  im- 
portance of  the  King's  deciding  at  once  to  adopt  a 
liberal  system  of  internal  policy  as  the  only  chance  of 
averting  a  political  convulsion  and  of  maintaining 
himself  and  his  dynasty  on  the  throne. 

"It  is  hardly  credible  that  either  His  Majesty,  or 
any  of  the  counsellors  by  whom  he  is  surrounded,  should 


LORD  JOHN'S  FORESIGHT  17 

shut  their  eyes  to  the  perils  of  the  present  moment, 
or  expect  that  when  the  rest  of  Italy  is  agitated  by  the 
hopes  of  liberty  and  improvement  in  its  social  position, 
Naples  alone  should  remain  uninfluenced  by  the 
general  movement. 

"  The  King  may  now  with  a  good  grace  enter  upon 
a  new  system  of  government,  without  exposing  himself 
to  any  imputation  of  inconsistency. 

"  It  may  suit  the  purposes  of  those  who  have 
thriven  on  past  abuses  to  encourage  the  King  to  follow 
in  his  father's  footsteps,  for  a  change  of  system  would 
probably  lead  to  their  ruin;  but  it  appears  to  Her 
Majesty's  Government  that  the  King  has  now  to 
choose  between  the  ruin  of  his  evil  counsellors  and  his 
own :  if  lie  sup  forts  and  upholds  them,  and  places  himself 
wider  their  guidance,  it  requires  not  much  foresight  to 
predict  that  the  Bourbon  dynasty  will  cease  to  reign  at 
Naples,  by  whatever  combination,  regal  or  republican, 
it  may  be  replaced. 

"  Her  Majesty's  Government  fully  admit  that  it  is 
not  desirable  that  any  Government  should  be  hasty  or 
.  intrusive  in  giving  advice  regarding  domestic  changes 
in  another  country,  but  when  the  throne  of  an  ally 
may  be  endangered  it  becomes  the  duty  of  a  friendly 
Power  to  say  that,  notwithstanding  its  desire  to  see 
the  present  dynasty  maintained  on  the  throne  of 
Naples,  neither  the  moral  nor  the  material  support  of 
England  is  to  be  looked  for  by  the  King,  if,  by  a  con- 
tinual denial  of  justice  and  the  refusal  of  an  improved 
form  of  internal  administration,  the  Neapolitan  people 
should  be  driven  into  insurrection  and  should  succeed 
in  expelling  the  present  dynasty  from  the  throne." 

It  is  altogether  untrue  that,  as  has  often  been 
asserted,  Lord  Palmerston's  Government  was  ill- 
disposed  towards  King  Francis  from  the  outset  of  his 
reign,  or  that  at  the  last  he  had  any  just  cause  of 
complaint  against  them.  They  had  wished,  by  the 
only  practicable  means,  to  save  him  from  the  fate 

3 


18  NAPLES  [i860 

they  saw  impending  over  him,  and  they  had  warned 
him  that  if  he  chose  to  neglect  those  means  he  had  no 
sympathy  to  look  for  from  England;  but  he  thought 
fit  to  laugh  at  their  warnings  and  their  advice,  and  he 
had  nobody  to  thank  for  his  fate  but  himself  and  his 
Camarilla.  Even  up  to  the  very  eve  of  the  sailing  of 
Garibaldi's  expedition  they  continued  to  show  their 
good-will  towards  him,  by  pressing  the  Sardinian 
Government  to  engage  to  abstain  from  any  aggression 
or  hostile  act  against  him. 

It  cost  Count  Cavour  nothing  to  give  a  promise  he 
had  not  the  slightest  intention  of  keeping,  and  during 
the  events  that  followed,  in  spite  of  my  own  strong 
sympathy  with  the  Italian  Liberals  and  my  abhorrence 
of  the  Neapolitan  Government,  I  saw  enough  to  revolt 
me  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Re  Galantuomo  and  his 
great  Minister. 

Three  years  before,  when  Pisacani  with  his  band  of 
volunteers  was  defeated  in  his  attempt  to  land  and  get 
up  a  revolution  in  the  Neapolitan  States,  Count  Cavour 
had  hastened  to  express  to  the  King  of  Naples  the 
indignation  of  his  Sovereign  at  such  a  criminal  attack 
upon  a  friendly  State  by  desperate  conspirators, 
which  he  said  was  a  "  crime  of  robbery  and  rebellion 
deserving  to  be  punished  by  the  ordinary  law,  and 
in  no  way  to  be  confounded  with  a  state  of  legal 
war." 

But  although  Garibaldi's  expedition  was  the  exact 
counterpart  of  that  of  Pisacani,  composed  like  it  of  the 
same  disreputable  elements,  of  adventurers  of  all 
nationalities — English,  Italians,  Poles,  Hungarians, 
etc. — with  scarcely  a  shred  of  character  among  them, 
though  full  of  the  dare-devil  courage  requisite  for  such 
an  enterprise,  Cavour  would  hardly  have  been  open  to 
reproach  if  he  had  simply  taken  advantage  of  their 
success  to  forward  the  ambition  of  his  country;  but 
between  this  and  the  conniving  at  and  assisting  a 
filibustering  expedition  against  a  friendly  State,  while 


CAVOUB'S  POLICY  19 

deluding  its  Sovereign  with  misleading  assurances  of 
good-will,  there  is  a  very  vast  difference. 

At  the  time  when  Cavour  promised  our  Government 
to  abstain  from  every  hostile  act  against  Naples,  his 
agents  there  and  in  Sicily  had  long  been  working  to 
stir  up  revolutionary  movements:  Garibaldi's  ex- 
pedition was  being  got  ready  by  means  of  money 
furnished  by  Victor  Emmanuel  and  of  arms  professedly 
stolen  from  the  royal  arsenals;  Admiral  Persano  was 
instructed  not  to  interfere  with  it,  and  was  even 
permitted  on  one  occasion  to  escort  it  and  protect  it 
from  the  Neapolitan  cruisers.  Cavour  had  resolved 
to  make  use  of  Garibaldi,  but  he  dreaded  his  getting 
entirely  into  the  hands  of  the  "  party  of  action  "  or 
Mazzinian  republicans,  of  whom  his  partisans  were 
mainly  composed,  and  his  correspondence  with  Per- 
sano shows  his  anxiety  upon  this  score,  and  that  he 
felt  the  necessity  of  being  ready  at  the  proper  moment 
to  take  the  control  of  events  from  the  hands  of  the 
Dictator  and  to  transfer  it  to  those  of  his  own 
Sovereign. 

The  two  men  were  indispensable  to  each  other,  but 
there  was  distrust  on  both  sides,  and  on  that  of 
Garibaldi  at  least  a  mortal  hatred  of  the  Minister  to 
whose  more  than  connivance  he  alone  owed  his  success, 
and  through  whom  he  was  at  last  saved  from  utter 
destruction  by  the  opportune  intervention  of  the 
regular  Sardinian  army;  but,  as  that  intervention, 
while  saving  him  and  his  volunteers,  necessarily  trans- 
ferred his  authority  to  the  King,  the  late  Dictator 
had  to  retire  to  his  island  of  Caprera  in  the  disgust  and 
anger  with  which  he  pursued  Count  Cavour  to  the  end 
of  his  life  with  relentless  bitterness. 

Counting  upon  the  discontent  prevailing  in  Sicily 
and  Naples,  Cavour  and  Garibaldi  had  hoped  to  get 
up  a  general  insurrection,  which  was  to  be  the  excuse 
for  the  landing  of  bands  of  sympathising  volunteers 
held  in  readiness  to  ensure  the  success  of  the  move- 


20  NAPLES  [i860 

ment;  and  with  this  object  the  latter  was  ready  to 
resort  to  means  from  which  Cavour,  unscrupulous  as 
he  was,   would   most   assuredly  have  recoiled;   for 
Garibaldi's  plan  was  that  the  insurrection  should  com- 
mence with  the  assassination  of  Maniscalco,  the  Chief 
of  Police,  and  one  or  two  other  obnoxious  individuals. 
When  this  plot  became  known  to  me,  through  a 
letter  accidentally  mis-sent  to  one  of   our  Consuls 
and  forwarded  to  me,  I  at  first  entirely  refused  to 
consider  it  authentic,  or  to  believe  that  Garibaldi 
could  sanction  anything  that  appeared  so  contrary  to 
a  character  that  had  in  it  so  much  that  was  great  and 
generous ;  but  unfortunately  there  can  be  no  doubt  of 
his  having  accepted  the  hateful  Mazzinian  doctrine  of 
the  dagger,  as  was  proved  when  a  letter  of  his  was 
published,    openly    advocating    assassination    as    a 
legitimate   arm  against  the   "  agents   of  tyranny." 
The  bulletins  of  his  Committee  at  Naples,  of  which  I 
have  still  some  copies,  bear  the  device  of  three  fraternal 
hands  grasping  a  dagger ;  and  during  his  Dictatorship 
he  issued  a  decree  conferring  a  pension  on  the  family 
of  a  certain  Agesilao  Milano  as  a  man  entitled  to  the 
gratitude  of  his  country  for  the  attempted  murder 
of   King   Ferdinand,    for   which   he   was   executed. 
Although,  when  the  Dictator's  Neapolitan  decrees 
were  confirmed  en  bloc  by  the  Italian  Government,  this 
one  among  the  rest  acquired  the  force  of  law,  Victor 
Emmanuel's  Ministers  afterwards  declared  to  me  that, 
whatever  might  be  the  legal  right  of  the  Milano  family, 
they  never  had  paid  and  never  would  pay  a  farthing 
of  a  grant  made  for  such  an  infamous  cause;  but  the 
blot  upon  Garibaldi  must  always  remain. 

All  efforts  to  get  up  insurrections  having  entirely 
failed,  Garibaldi  determined  to  try  what  he  could  do 
with  his  volunteers,  trusting  to  being  joined  by  the 
populations,  who  received  him  indeed  with  enthusiasm, 
but  gave  him  little  help  either  in  money  or  in  fighting 
men;  and  his  extraordinary  success  was  achieved  by 


CAVOUR'S  POLICY  21 

the  determined  courage  of  the  "  Thousand  of  Marsala" 
and  the  treachery  of  the  Neapolitan  officers,  who  had 
been  already  corrupted  and  secured  by  the  Sardinian 
agents. 

When  the  conquest  of  Sicily  had  been  accomplished 
and  Garibaldi  was  preparing  for  that  of  Naples,  Count 
Cavour's  difficulty  became  very  great,  for  Victor 
Emmanuel — no  doubt  upon  the  demand  of  the 
Emperor  Napoleon,  who  did  not  wish  the  movement 
to  extend  beyond  Sicily — sent  an  envoy  to  Garibaldi 
asking  him  not  to  pass  the  Straits. 

This  was  no  doubt  a  mere  piece  of  acting,  for  Cavour 
at  all  events  was  resolved  that  the  conquest  of  Italy 
should  follow  the  conquest  of  Sicily,  and  he  sent  a 
letter  to  Persano  along  with  the  King's  envoy,  which 
was  certain  to  prevent  the  latter  from  being  listened 
to.  He  fully  recognised  the  fact  that  it  was  vain  to 
wait  for  the  Neapolitans  to  rise;  but  he  was  not  to  be 
deterred  by  that :  he  desired  Admiral  Persano  to  con- 
gratulate Garibaldi  on  his  victories,  and  added,  "'  I 
cannot  see  what  there  is  to  prevent  him  from  passing 
over  to  the  Continent.  I  should  have  preferred  that 
the  Neapolitans  themselves  should  "accomplish  at  least 
the  beginnmg  of  the  work  of  regeneration,  but,  as  they 
will  not  or  cannot  move,  let  Garibaldi  act.  The 
enterprise  cannot  stop  half-way."  Then  again,  "  The 
problem  we  have  to  solve  is  this — to  help  the  revolu- 
tion, but  to  help  it  in  such  a  way  that  it  may  appear 
in  the  eyes  of  Europe  to  have  been  a  spontaneous  act. 
If  you  can  manage  it  in  that  way  France  and  England 
will  be  with  us,  but  if  not  I  know  not  what  they 
may  do." 

It  was  so  managed,  and  England  and  France 
acquiesced  and  accepted  the  fait  accompli,  willingly 
on  the  part  of  our  Government,  which  by  this  time 
had  become  convinced  that  the  annexation  of  the 
Two  Sicilies  to  Victor  Emmanuel's  kingdom  would 
be  the  best  solution  of  the  difficulty,  but  grudgingly 


NAPLES  [i860 

by  France,  which  had  proposed  to  us  to  join  in  op- 
posing any  attempt  on  the  part  of  Garibaldi  to  pass  to 
the  mainland.  In  the  face  of  the  positive  refusal  of 
England  to  depart  from  the  principle  of  non-inter- 
vention, which  they  had  both  professed,  the  Emperor 
did  not  venture  alone  upon  a  measure  that  would  raise 
the  wrath  of  all  the  Liberals  throughout  Italy,  and  he 
was  forced  to  remain  a  passive  spectator  of  events 
which  could  not  be  agreeable  to  him. 

He  had  been  acting  a  suspicious  part  throughout; 
and  although  it  is  not  yet  ascertained  whether  he  had 
a  previous  knowledge  of,  or  had  given  a  sanction  to, 
Garibaldi's  enterprise  against  Sicily,  there  is  sufficient 
evidence  that  he  regarded  it  with  favour  at  a  very 
early  date,  and  hoped  to  turn  it  to  his  own  account. 
That  he  would  knowingly  countenance  anything  that 
was  to  lead  to  the  absorption  of  the  Two  Sicilies  into 
the  kingdom  of  Victor  Emmanuel  without  any  com- 
pensation or  equivalent  for  France  cannot  for  a 
moment  be  supposed,  and  there  are  strong  grounds 
for  believing  that  he  counted  upon  being  able  to  get 
Prince  Murat  placed  on  the  throne  of  the  island  if 
King  Francis  was  expelled  from  it,  thus  adding  greatly 
to  the  power  of  France  in  the  Mediterranean. 

If  he  should  fail  in  this,  through  the  annexation  of 
Sicily  to  Piedmont,  he  would  still  have  in  reserve  the 
alternative  of  demanding  the  cession  to  France  of  the 
island  of  Sardinia  as  a  balance  to  what  was  acquired 
by  Victor  Emmanuel,  and  his  Minister  at  Naples  went 
so  far  as  to  declare  in  plain  terms  that  the  annexation 
would  make  this  "  indispensable/'  These  calcula- 
tions, of  which  I  was  well  aware,  gave  me  much 
anxiety  while  the  events  were  in  progress,  but  they 
were  defeated  by  the  promptitude  with  which  Cavour 
availed  himself  of  the  position  created  by  Garibaldi, 
and  by  the  steady  support  given  by  Her  Majesty's 
Government  to  Victor  Emmanuel  and  his  great,  though 
unscrupulous  Minister. 


EMPEROR  NAPOLEON'S  POLICY         23 

If  they  had  consented  to  act  with  the  Emperor  in 
stopping  Garibaldi  at  the  Straits  of  Messina  we  should 
not  have  seen  the  unification  of  Italy  quietly  accom- 
plished; and  the  Italians,  as  they  were  well  aware, 
mainly  owed  that  great  result  to  Lord  Palmerston  and 
Lord  John  Russell. 

No  clue  to  what  France  was  driving  at  could  be 
obtained  from  the  attitude  of  my  French  colleague,* 
which  was  perplexing  and  continually  changing,  for 
at  one  moment  he  went  out  of  his  way  to  advertise 
himself  as  supporting  the  Liberal  party,  and  at  the 
next  he  was  seen  to  be  hand  and  glove  with  the  Palace 
reactionaries ;  but  it  was  not  in  the  nature  of  the  man 
to  remain  quiet,  and  as  he  was  entirely  ignorant  of  his 
Emperor's  real  designs  he  kept  dancing  first  on  one  leg 
and  then  on  the  other,  according  to  what  he  supposed 
them  at  the  moment  to  be,  with  the  result  that  in  the 
end  both  he  and  his  Government  were  regarded  with 
an  equal  distrust  by  all  parties. 

The  Emperor  Napoleon  always  loved  a  tortuous 
mode  of  proceeding,  and  it  was  his  habit  on  critical 
occasions  to  employ,  in  addition  to  his  accredited 
Ministers,  unavowed  agents,  to  whom,  unknown  to  his 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  he  conveyed  his  more 
secret  views ;  and  the  language  held  at  Turin  by  these 
agents  was  frequently  so  much  at  variance  with 
that  which  Baron  Brenier  was  directed  by  Count 
Thouvenel  to  hold  at  Naples  that  it  was  scarcely 
surprising  that  he  should  be  perplexed. 

When  Garibaldi  had  effected  the  conquest  of  Sicily 
the  Court  of  Naples  at  last  became  thoroughly  alarmed, 
and  awoke  to  the  necessity  of  trying  to  satisfy  the 
people.  A  Constitution  was  proclaimed — a  general 
amnesty  granted — the  disbanding  of  the  foreign 
mercenary  troops  promised — the  reactionary  Ministers, 
with  most  of  the  Camarilla,  dismissed,  and  a  new 
Ministry  formed  of  honourable,  honest  men,  with 
*  Baron  Brenier,  French  Envoy  at  the  Neapolitan  Court. 


24  NAPLES  [i860 

Spinelli  at  its  head  and  De  Martino  as  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  but  with  one  false  brother  in  their 
midst  in  Liborio  Romano,  the  Minister  of  the  Interior, 
who  from  the  outset  was  working  steadily,  under  the 
direction  of  Count  Cavour,  to  compass  the  ruin  of  the 
King  he  was  pretending  to  serve. 

The  first  act  of  the  new  Ministers  was  to  accept  all 
the  conditions  proposed  by  Cavour  for  a  friendly 
alliance  between  Naples  and  Sardinia,  for  which  he 
professed  himself  anxious,  and  they  despatched  to 
Turin,  in  order  to  come  to  a  complete  understanding, 
the  Signor  Manna,  an  honest  Liberal,  but  most  simple- 
minded  man,  whom  Cavour  befooled  to  the  top  of  his 
bent,  writing  to  Villamarina,  his  Minister  at  Naples — 
as  the  latter  himself  told  me — that  it  was  delightful  to 
have  to  deal  with  such  an  agent,  "as  he  believes 
everything  I  tell  him  !"  He  redoubled  his  assurances 
of  a  wish  for  a  friendly  alliance,  and  at  the  very  same 
time  he  was  writing  to  Admiral  Persano  to  encourage 
Garibaldi  without  further  delay  to  leave  Sicily  and  to 
proceed  at  once  to  the  conquest  of  Naples. 

Although  the  treacherous  duplicity  with  which 
Victor  Emmanuel  and  his  Government  had  been  acting 
was  not  fully  known  till  some  years  later,  I  was  pretty 
well  informed  of  it  through  my  intimacy  with  the 
Marquis  Villamarina,  the  Piedmontese  Minister.  It 
was  not  an  edifying  sight,  and  might  well  have  turned 
one's  sympathies  to  the  victim  of  these  intrigues, 
if  it  had  not  been  for  the  knowledge  that  the  victim 
was  entirely  undeserving  of  either  sympathy  or  pity, 
that  he  was  not  one  whit  less  false  than  those  who  were 
deceiving  him,  and  that  he  was  not  acting  loyally 
by  his  own  Liberal  Ministers,  but  continued  to  the 
end  to  coquet  with  the  reactionaries. 


CHAPTER  II 

NAPLES,  JULY-AUGUST  1860 

[Mr.  Elliot's  journal  opens  with  an  entry  dated  July  6, 1860. 
Events  had  been  shaping  themselves  quickly.  The  war 
declared  by  Sardinia  and  France  against  Austria  was  termi- 
nated by  the  victories  of  Magenta  and  Solferino,  but  the 
Preliminary  Treaty  concluded  by  the  Emperor  acting  inde- 
pendently and  signed  at  Villa  Franca  in  July  1859  left 
Austria  in  possession  of  Venetia.  Italian  patriots  were 
indignant,  and  when  the  Sardinians  learnt  not  only  that 
Venetia  was  sacrificed  but  that  the  Emperor's  support  had 
been  bought  at  the  price  of  the  cession  of  Nice  and  Savoy  to 
France  their  feelings  may  be  better  imagined  than  described. 
In  March  1860  the  States  of  Central  Italy  had  voted  their 
union  to  the  Kingdom  of  Victor  Emmanuel,  and  almost 
simultaneously  the  revolution  in  Southern  Italy  had  broken 
out,  and  Garibaldi  sailed  from  Genoa  with  a  few  hundred 
men  to  the  aid  of  the  Sicilian  insurgents.  From  this  time 
forward  the  attitude  of  France  became  less  and  less  friendly 
towards  the  advocates  of  Liberal  policy ;  the  Emperor  realised 
that  by  the  Treaty  of  Villa  Franca  and  the  annexation  of 
Savoy  and  Nice  he  had  lost  all  popularity  in  Italy,  where  he 
was  now  known  as  il  gran  traditore  ;  and  the  pressure  exerted 
by  the  clerical  party  in  France  was  daily  increasing,  in  par- 
ticular the  feeling  in  the  French  fleet  was  strongly  opposed  to 
Garibaldi  and  the  insurgents.] 

About  two  months  after  the  landing  of  Garibaldi  in 
Sicily,  seeing  that  stirring  times  were  approaching, 
I  began  noting  down  passing  events  in  letters  to  my 
brother  George,  to  whom,  as  Lord  John's  private 
secretary,  I  was  free  to  speak  openly,  but  which  were 
chiefly  intended  as  a  sort  of  journal  for  myself;  and 
the  following  extracts  from  them  give  a  more  or  less 
consecutive  account  of  the  occurrences  as  they 
unfolded  themselves  from  that  time  down  to  the  final 
collapse  of  the  Neapolitan  dynasty. 

25 


26  NAPLES  [i860 

The  journal  begins  just  after  the  formation  of  the 
Liberal  administration  of  Spinelli  and  De  Martino, 
who  had  undertaken  the  wellnigh  hopeless  task  of 
trying  to  save  the  King  through  the  newly  proclaimed 
Constitution,  to  which  they  were  determined  to  remain 
faithful;  and  these  two  men  deserve  to  be  mentioned 
as  the  only  Neapolitans  of  whom  it  could  be  said,  after 
the  close  of  the  drama,  that  they  throughout  played  a 
thoroughly  honest  and  honourable  part,  for  the  general 
action  of  their  countrymen  was  beneath  contempt. 

Castellamare,  July  6,  1860. — There  is  little  or  no 
change  in  the  state  of  things  since  I  last  wrote,  and 
although  the  Government  have  given  all  they  possibly 
can  give — Constitution,  etc. — there  is  not  an  appear- 
ance of  satisfaction  among  the  people,  who  have 
become  used  to  thinking  that  the  one  thing  to  be 
wished  for  is  the  fall  of  the  Bourbon  dynasty,  and 
have  for  the  moment  no  intention  of  being  satisfied 
with  any  tiring  else. 

The  feeling  in  favour  of  annexation  to  Piedmont  is 
now  certainly  very  universal,  though  I  believe  those 
who  declare  that  it  springs  from  the  belief  that  it  is 
the  best  arm  with  which  they  can  eject  the  Bourbons 
rather  than  from  any  real  wish  for  it.  But  whether 
this  is  so  or  not,  there  it  is — a  great  and  undeniable 
fact. 

One  unaccountable  impression  prevailing  among 
many  sensible  people  is  that  France  would  not  be 
unfavourable  to  annexation,  but,  within  the  last 
few  days,  Brenier,  the  French  Minister,  has  opened 
the  eyes  of  one  or  two  of  those  who  were  most  strongly 
of  this  opinion,  for,  after  arguing  against  annexation, 
he  blurted  out,  "  Well,  you  have  convinced  me  of  one 
thing  of  which  I  was  pretty  well  aware,  that  in  this 
country  there  are  only  Absolutists  and  Mazzinians, 
but,  if  you  do  not  choose  to  be  satisfied  with  a  Con- 
stitution, you  may  trust  me  when  I  tell  you  that  you 
shall  not  have  annexation."     This  was  plain  speaking, 


QUESTION  OF  ANNEXATION  27 

and  may  do  good,  for  it  is  now  known  and  spread 
about. 

It  is  irritating  to  me  to  see  the  French  playing  a  deep 
game  without  being  able  to  be  certain  what  is  aimed 
at,  but  one  object  clearly  is  to  excite  distrust  of  both 
England  and  Sardinia,  and  Brenier  is  beginning  to  hint 
that,  if  annexation  does  take  place,  France  must  take 
care  of  herself,  as  she  had  been  "  obliged  "  to  do  by 
taking  Savoy  and  Nice  after  the  annexation  of  the 
Duchies. 

July  7. — I  found  De  Martino,  the  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  very  low  this  morning,  in  consequence 
of  hearing  from  Turin  that,  as  price  of  an  alliance, 
Sardinia  insists  that  the  Sicilians  should  be  left 
absolutely  free  to  settle  their  future  lot,  and  that  our 
Government  consider  the  demand  very  moderate. 

Things  are  looking  uneasy  at  Naples,  the  troops  and 
Lazzaroni  dissatisfied  and  eager  for  pillage,  and  no  one 
heartily  on  the  side  of  the  Government. 

July  8. — For  some  weeks  I  have  hardly  had  time  for 
writing,  and  there  is  still  no  great  prospect  of  our 
being  near  an  end,  for,  as  ladies  say  under  certain 
interesting  circumstances,  it  is  by  no  means  impossible 
that  we  "  must  be  worse  before  we  are  better."  Bar- 
ring a  change  of  dynasty,  no  revolution  could  well 
be  more  complete  than  that  which  we  have  already 
had,  but  no  one  appears  inclined  to  be  satisfied  with  it, 
and  there  is  every  wish  that  the  trifling  exception  I 
have  mentioned  should  be  remedied,  for  there  is  a 
distrust  of  the  race  which  seems  insuperable,  and  which 
is  not  much  to  be  wondered  at. 

If  the  Constitution  now  granted  is  accepted,  it  will 
be  the  fault  of  the  people  themselves  if  they  cannot 
keep  it,  now  that  it  is  backed  with  a  proposed  alliance 
with  Piedmont,  who  would,  of  course,  at  once  make 
its  suspension  a  matter  of  personal  quarrel. 

A  year  ago  there  was  hardly  an  annexationist  to 
be  found  in  this  part  of  Italy,  and  now  pretty  nearly 


28  NAPLES  [i860 

the  whole  country  is  so  for  the  moment.  I  believe, 
however,  that  it  is  only  for  the  moment,  and  that,  as 
any  stick  is  good  enough  to  beat  a  dog  with,  annexa- 
tion was  adopted  as  the  most  probable  way  of  escaping 
from  a  rule  of  which  they  were  thoroughly  sick.  The 
people  knew  very  well  that  Piedmont  would  not  resist 
the  bait,  and  that,  openly  or  underhand,  the  Pied- 
montese  would  do  the  work  which  they  themselves 
are  too  soft  or  too  timid  to  attempt. 

Exactly  the  same  thing  took  place  in  Sicily,  which 
most  assuredly  has  not  gained  her  own  inde- 
pendence, but  owes  it  entirely  to  Garibaldi  and  his 
marvellous  band. 

Garibaldi  and  "  our  own  correspondent  "  of  course 
praise  up  the  Sicilians,  but  every  account  without 
exception  which  I  have  received  from  Palermo  shows 
this  to  be  the  case.  Amongst  others,  the  other  day  a 
Yankee  captain,  who  had  been  all  the  time  at  Palermo, 
and  is  an  out-and-out  sympathiser,  declared  to  me  that 
the  Sicilians  had  done  almost  nothing,  and  that  the 
royal  army  of  about  20,000  men  had  been  literally 
driven  out  by  Garibaldi  and  his  900. 

The  power  of  his  name  is  something  wonderful.  His 
people  were  twice  driven  back  on  a  bridge  the  day 
they  entered  Palermo,  and  the  royal  troops  had  stood 
firm  without  wavering,  till,  on  advancing  a  third  and 
last  time  to  the  attack,  the  order  was  given  to  do  so 
with  cries  of  :  Viva  Garibaldi,"  whereupon  the 
Neapolitan  soldiers  at  once  threw  down  their  arms 
and  cut  and  ran  for  it.  I  believe  this  to  be  literally 
true,  and  it  gives  a  poor  prospect  for  the  royal  cause 
if  the  Chieftain  should  make  his  appearance  on  the 
mainland,  as  he  threatens. 

However,  it  is  said  that  the  soldiers  fought  well  at 
Palermo,  but  the  officers  detestably  or  not  at  all. 
At  one  place,  Miselmeri,  I  think,  where  there  were 
130  soldiers  killed  or  wounded,  only  two  officers  got 
slightly  touched.     The  hope  of  pillage  and  plunder 


PANIC  AT  CASTELLAMARE  29 

has  a  wonderful  effect  upon  the  Neapolitan  soldier, 
and  with  a  prospect  of  it  he  is  ready  to  run  some  risk. 
Their  loot  has  been  almost  publicly  selling  at  some 
of  the  provincial  towns  where  they  have  been  sent 
since  their  return  from  Sicily,  and  it  is  not  altogether 
agreeable  to  know  that  the  greater  part  of  our  Castel- 
lamare  garrison  consists  of  a  regiment  which  in  Sicily 
particularly  distinguished  itself  in  burning  and  sacking 
the  small  country  town  of  Carini.  Two  nights  ago 
these  worthies  went  the  length  of  showing  manifest 
signs  of  disgust  at  having  been  kept  here  so  long 
without  getting  anything  for  their  pains.  Besides 
this,  we  have  a  prison  containing  about  a  thousand 
convicts,  the  most  thorough  cut-throat-looking  villains 
that  one  ever  saw,  in  whom  even  I,  with  all  my  old 
tenderness  for  convicts,  cannot  feel  the  smallest  in- 
terest ;  and  these  gentlemen  are  eagerly  looking  for  the 
moment  when  they  may  break  loose. 

All  this  sounds  very  alarming,  but  I  assure  you  our 
nerves  are  not  in  the  slightest  degree  affected,  and  we 
sleep  as  quietly  as  if  neither  soldier  nor  convict  was 
within  a  hundred  miles,  notwithstanding  the  example 
of  panic  set  by  our  French  colleague,  who  has  a  house 
here  also,  and  who  for  the  last  ten  days  has  had  a 
bodyguard  of  sailors,  who  mount  guard  all  night  on 
the  top  of  it,  and  occasionally  sound  midnight  alarms 
and  disturb  all  the  inmates  out  of  their  slumbers. 

Italian  dogs  generally  pass  one-half  of  the  night  in 
barking,  and  Castellamare  donkeys  keep  braying  at 
intervals  from  sunset  to  sunrise,  and  one  evening  that 
they  had  been  more  busy  than  usual  in  this  way  they 
inspired  a  panic  in  the  gallant  breasts  of  the  French 
garrison.  Messengers  were  sent  round  to  their  various 
neighbours  and  country-people,  who  came  and  took 
refuge  under  the  diplomatic  roof  and  the  sacred 
Tricolour,  and  in  the  morning  were  intensely  disgusted 
to  find  that,  excepting  themselves,  no  one  had  been 
disturbed  or  frightened. 


30  NAPLES  [i860 

They,  as  well  as  we,  have  got  a  ship  of  war  in  the 
harbour,  from  which,  if  occasion  should  call  for  it, 
assistance  could  be  got  in  a  very  short  time,  but  to  keep 
up  a  chronic  state  of  panic  is  perfectly  absurd.  How- 
ever, if  the  convicts  were  to  break  out,  I  should  also 
take  measures  for  the  security  of  the  house,  but  in  the 
meantime  am  quite  satisfied  with  knowing  that  if  we 
made  a  signal  of  distress  it  would  be  understood  by 
our  ship. 

I  wish  the  public  had  been  so  considerate  as  to  have 
chosen  another  time  of  year  for  their  revolutionary 
proceedings,  for  to  me  it  is  very  inconvenient  and 
annoying  to  have  to  run  in  and  out  between  Naples 
and  Castellamare,  as  the  railroad  in  the  dog-days  is  not 
amusing,  and  I  find  that  during  the  last  week  I  spent 
exactly  twenty-four  hours  on  the  road.  I  have  estab- 
lished a  good  sailing-boat,  and,  if  not  kept  in  town  till 
the  breeze  dies  away,  I  sail  back  from  town,  and  thus, 
instead  of  an  odious  roasting,  spend  a  couple  of  very 
agreeable  hours,  finishing  off  with  a  swim  to  give  one 
an  appetite  for  dinner.  Our  real  heats  have  not  begun 
yet  in  earnest,  though  to-day  they  look  as  if  they  were 
coming,  but  I  scarcely  think  we  have  hitherto  had  the 
thermometer  above  80. 

July  18. — The  outbreak  of  the  soldiers  on  Sunday 
evening  was  one  of  those  things  which  appear  almost 
incredible  till  one  knows  a  little  what  the  discipline  of 
the  Neapolitan  army  is,  and  then  one  may  be  prepared 
for  anything.  Perhaps  some  of  the  secrets  of  the 
movement  may  come  out  in  the  course  of  the  enquiries 
which  are  to  be  made;  but,  though  the  Government 
wish  for  publicity,  there  maybe  names  mixed  up  which 
they  may  be  afraid  to  publish.  At  present  all  that  is 
certain  is  that  a  number  of  soldiers  ran  down  the  most 
public  streets  forcing  people  to  cry  i:  Viva  il  Re,"  and 
though  the  people  when  invited  in  that  way  would 
have  cried  "  Viva  il  Diavolo,"  their  compliance  did  not 
save  them  from  being  slashed  and  cut.    Conyngham 


OUTBKEAK  OF  SOLDIERS  31 

was  at  a  window  in  the  Toledo,  and  saw  them  pass 
under  his  feet,  acting  literally  as  if  they  were  mad  or 
drunk,  which  they  probably  were,  having  been 
primed  beforehand,  for  they  went  cutting  indis- 
criminately at  carriages,  lamp-posts,  or  anything  that 
refused  to  shout  for  the  King.  Our  Consul,  Bonham, 
found  himself  in  the  middle  of  it  before  he  knew  where 
he  was,  and  was  surrounded  and  made  to  show  his 
loyalty  like  the  rest,  which  he  did  without  being  in- 
vited twice,  but,  not  having  taken  off  his  hat  at  the 
mention  of  the  sacred  name  of  royalty,  it  was  knocked 
off  by  a  neat  cut  from  a  sword.  Of  course,  I  have 
asked  for  satisfaction. 

The  Prussian  Minister,  Perponcher,  who  had  only 
arrived  three  days  before,  was  close  behind  Bonham, 
and  would  have  been  treated  in  the  same  way  if  an 
officer  had  not  given  him  a  convoy.  The  officers 
behaved  well  throughout,  and  did  what  they  could — 
to  the  extent,  it  is  said,  of  running  some  of  the  men 
through  the  body.  Then  came  the  turn  of  the  French 
Admiral,  who  had  just  landed  and  got  into  a  carriage, 
about  which  there  was  a  sort  of  consultation  as  to 
what  was  to  be  done,  when  it  was  decided  simply  to 
ascertain  that  he  had  a  loyal  coachman,  who  took  the 
test,  and  the  Admiral,  being  surrounded  by  his  boat's 
crew,  was  left  in  peace.  He  has  declared,  however,  to 
Admiral  Mundy*  that  if  he  sees  anything  of  the  kind 
again  he  will  at  once  land  armed  men,  and  this  is,  no 
doubt,  what  he  is  panting  to  do. 

Brenier  also  talks  of  his  having  himself  received  no 
proper  satisfaction  for  his  broken  head,  and  says  that 
Thouvenel  will  certainly  require  more.  I  asked  him 
whether  the  King  had  not  sent  his  A.D.C.  to  express 
his  regrets  and  condolence,  and  whether  both  Princes 
of  the  Royal  Family  and  the  Ministers  had  not  called 
upon  him  for  the  same  purpose,  and  I  said  that  it 
seemed  to  me  that  the  reparation  must  either  be  by 
words  or  in  money,  and  that,  as  he  could  not  wish  for 
*  In  command  of  British  Squadron. 


32  NAPLES  [i860 

the  latter,  I  did  not  see  why  he  should  not  be  satisfied 
with  the  verbal  excuses  he  had  received.  He  then 
said  that  the  Government  might  at  least  have  put 
into  the  instructions  of  the  Marquis  de  la  Greca,  who 
has  gone  on  a  special  mission  to  Paris  and  London, 
that  he  was  to  express  to  the  Emperor  the  regret  of  the 
Neapolitan  Government  for  the  outrage.  (He  had 
been  struck  in  the  street  with  a  stick  some  time  before.) 
I  consequently  gave  De  Martino  a  hint,  and  he  said 
he  would  at  once  send  a  telegraphic  instruction  to  this 
effect. 

The  French  are  evidently  determined  not  to  be 
satisfied  if  they  can  help  it,  and  it  is  well  to  leave  them 
no  reason  to  complain.  They  have  in  their  hearts  no 
more  wish  than  Garibaldi  himself  to  see  the  Bourbons 
really  maintained,  in  a  way  likely  to  be  permanent, 
upon  the  throne;  but  they  thought  it  necessary  to 
make  a  show  of  giving  the  advice  calculated  to  give 
them  a  right  to  say  that  they  had  done  what  they 
could  to  save  them.  Then  they  insisted  upon  their 
advice  being  followed  when  nothing  was  prepared,  and 
no  new  Ministers  ready,  so  as  to  give  every  chance  of 
the  concessions  of  the  King  breaking  down  at  once. 
Then  they  began  to  blacken  everything  that  was  done 
by  the  Government,  and  to  try  indirectly  to  prevent 
the  public  from  receiving  it  as  satisfactory.  Then 
came  strong  declarations  against  annexation  to  Pied- 
mont from  the  French  Minister,  while,  underhand,  his 
Legation  was  doing  everything  to  be  popular  with  the 
annexationists,  and  to  make  them  believe  that  France 
would  not  object  to  see  it  carried  out. 

Now  the  question  is,  what  all  this  means,  and  it 
seems  to  me  it  can  only  be  explained  thus : 

First  of  all,  if  the  dynasty  is  saved  it  is  to  be  the 
doing  of  France  alone,  and  it  will  be  expected  to  be 
thoroughly  subservient  and  properly  grateful  to  its 
saviours.  But,  if  the  dynasty  falls,  there  must  either 
be"  the  annexation  to  Sardinia  or  the  choice  of  a  new 


FRENCH  VIEWS  33 

Sovereign.  In  the  former  case  we  may  make  up  our 
minds  for  a  demand  for  compensation  in  the  shape  of 
the  Island  of  Sardinia  or  Genoa,  or  both,  and  we  shall 
be  told  that  France  always  opposed  the  annexation, 
and  is  obliged  to  make  the  demand  when  it  was 
carried  hi  spite  of  her.  If,  however,  there  is  to  be  a 
new  Sovereign  chosen,  we  shall  have  intrigues  of  all 
kinds  to  direct  the  choice  into  French  channels;  and 
they  have  already  secured  some  nominations  that 
will  help  them  towards  their  object,  and  within 
the  last  ten  days  one  begins  again  at  times  to  hear 
the  name  of  Murat,  which  had  before  been  almost 
forgotten. 

However,  I  do  not  myself  believe  that  any  amount 
of  intrigue  would  carry  through  a  French  Prince 
against  one  of  the  House  of  Savoy,  and  I  don't  feel 
much  doubt  that  a  Savoy  Sovereign  is  exactly  the 
arrangement  which  would  suit  people  best  through- 
out the  country;  but  would  the  French  ever  consent 
to  this,  or  would  they  say  that  it  was  annexation  in 
disguise  ?  If  they  were  to  come  down  with  any  such 
pretension,  of  course  it  would  be  necessary  to  insist 
on  the  exclusion  of  the  French  Prince  also. 

All  this  is  like  settling  what  is  to  be  done  with  the 
skin  of  the  live  lion,  but  the  poor  beast  is  so  nearly 
done  that  it  is  just  as  well  to  speculate  a  little  about  it. 

July  20. — We  yesterday  got  the  paper  with  Lord 
John's  answer  to  Sir  R.  Peel's  questions  about  Sar- 
dinia, Sicily,  and  annexation,  which  will  delight  the 
Liberals  of  Italy,  and  if  other  countries  could  only  be 
induced  to  speak  in  the  same  way  everything  would 
go  smoothly  enough;  but,  as  they  do  not  do  so,  I  am 
not  sure  that  it  was  prudent  to  give  the  annexationists 
such  immense  encouragement  as  they  will  find  in  the 
unqualified  declaration  that  our  Government  so 
strongly  maintains  the  right  of  the  Italians  to  decide 
upon  their  own  destinies.  I  had  a  long  talk  yesterday 
with  some  stout  annexationists,  whose  language  I 

4 


34  NAPLES  [i860 

believe  fairly  to  represent  the  views  of  the  party,  which 
do  not  appear  to  rne  to  be  such  as  are  much  to  our 
advantage.  They  say,  which  is  certainly  true,  that 
if  we  stand  aloof  the  annexation  will  soon  take  place. 
Then  they  say  that  if,  in  consequence,  France  demands 
Sardinia  or  Genoa,  England  will  come  forward  and  say 
that  it  is  not  to  be,  and  that  England,  backed  by  all 
Italy,  will  be  strong  enough  to  beat  France.  This 
seems  to  be  only  another  way  of  saying  that  we  must 
be  prepared  to  go  to  war  with  France  to  help  the 
Italians  to  try  the  experiment  of  Italian  unity,  and  to 
enable  Sardinia  to  enjoy  the  fruit  of  an  unprincipled 
aggressive  policy. 

July  22. — The  new  Government  have  been  doing 
all  that  men  could  do  to  save  the  dynasty  and  to  keep 
the  revolution  out  of  Naples,  but  they  were  called  hi 
so  late  that  they  have  very  uphill  work  of  it.  They 
have  just  played  their  last  card,  and  have  determined 
to  give  up  Sicily  altogether,  withdrawing  about 
20,000  men  they  still  have  at  Messina  and  Syracuse. 
Their  reason  for  this  is  that  they  feel  that  the  exist- 
ence of  the  dynasty  depends  upon  the  acceptance  by 
Sardinia  of  their  offered  friendship,  which  they  don't 
believe  possible  if  the  war  in  Sicily  is  continued. 

At  or  near  Messina  there  are  from  fifteen  to  seven- 
teen thousand  troops,  and  it  might  be  thought  that  in 
a  strong  place  like  that  they  might  strike  a  blow;  but 
the  disaffection  in  the  navy  has  become  so  great  that 
the  garrison  of  Messina  could  no  longer  count  on 
support  from  the  sea-side,  without  which  the  position 
would  not  be  tenable.  You  have  probably  heard  that 
the  captain  and  officers  of  the  Veloce,  one  of  the 
Neapolitan  war  steamers,  coolly  went  and  gave  her  up 
to  Garibaldi  at  Palermo,  and  then  went  out  and  cap- 
tured two  small  postal  steamers.  A  short  time  ago 
Cavour  mentioned  certain  conditions  on  which  Pied- 
mont would  be  disposed  to  be  friends,  and,  now  that 
the  whole  of  these  have  been  complied  with,  he  will  be 


TROOPS  WITHDRAWN  FROM  SICILY      35 

rather  puzzled,  I  should  think,  to  find  a  decent  excuse 
for  declining  the  alliance. 

July  24. — Yesterday  we  heard  that  Cavour  had 
announced  that  the  King  would  send  an  aide-de-camp 
to  Garibaldi  with  an  autograph  request  not  to  attack 
the  continental  Kingdom  of  Naples,  which  caused  no 
little  delight  to  this  Government ;  but  it  does  not  make 
matters  so  clear,  and  it  may,  indeed,  perhaps  bring  on 
other  complications,  for  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that 
the  public  in  Sardinia  may  not  take  upon  themselves 
violently  to  resent  this  alliance  with  the  Bourbons. 
It  is  possible  also  that  Garibaldi  may  disobey  this  order 
of  the  King's,  and  that  we  may  have  further  confusion 
in  Sicily,  where  he  puts  out  all  his  orders  in  the  name 
of  Victor  Emmanuel. 

Brenier  declares  that  when  Garibaldi  left  Palermo 
with  the  expedition  against  the  royalists  of  Milazzo, 
his  vessels  were  convoyed  by  the  Sardinian  Admiral  in 
the  frigate  Carlo  Alberto;  but  I  have  not  yet  heard  the 
story  confirmed  from  other  quarters,  so,  as  the  news- 
papers say,  "  Je  lui  en  laisse  toute  la  responsabilite." 
He,  the  busy  B.,  is,  I  am  told,  furious  at  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  island,  and  has  written  to  De  Martino  to 
say  so.  I,  on  the  contrary,  only  wish  that  it  had  been 
done  sooner;  for  to-clay  we  receive  news  from  Messina 
that  the  troops  have  been  well  beaten  by  Garibaldi  at 
Milazzo,  where  their  best  man,  Bosco,  is  shut  up  in  the 
citadel  with  a  strong  body  which  Garibaldi  will  not 
allow  to  leave  with  the  honours  of  war. 

The  truth  is  that  we  are  in  such  a  state  of  com- 
plicated confusion  that  I  cannot  see  any  tolerable 
escape  from  the  mess,  and  while  it  is  certain  that  the 
more  England  keeps  out  of  it  the  better,  one  cannot 
help,  at  the  same  time,  seeing  that  things  may  drift 
into  such  a  current  that  we  may  ultimately  be  dragged 
into  them  in  the  most  disagreeable  way  in  the 
world. 
Naples  remains  quiet,  though  there  was  one  small 


36  NAPLES  [i860 

repetition  of  the  disgraceful  affair  of  the  15th,  which, 
by  the  way,  the  troops  have  tried  to  repeat  in  many 
country  towns;  in  fact,  our  real  danger — I  mean  the 
personal  danger  of  the  public — consists  at  present 
entirely  in  the  reactionist  leaning  of  the  army,  for 
among  the  soldiers  it  is  very  strong,  and  their  wish 
for  pillage  increases  the  risk.  The  disgraced  Guards 
who  were  ordered  to  Portici  refused  to  move  till  the 
King  put  himself  at  their  head,  and  so  they  went 
with  more  of  the  appearance  of  triumph  than  of 
disgrace. 

July  26. — Brenier  yesterday  read  me  a  despatch 
from  Thouvenel,  or  rather  great  part  of  one,  saying 
that  Lord  John,  after  having  shown  himself  disposed 
to  come  to  an  understanding  with  France  with  regard 
to  Naples,  had  now  announced  the  determination  of 
the  English  Government  to  abstain  completely  from 
all  interference,  and  adding  that,  however  he  may 
regret  this  determination,  it  will  not  in  any  way  make 
the  Emperor  modify  his  own  attitude.  I  asked 
whether  the  attitude  alluded  to  was  that  of  non- 
interference, but  was  told  that  it  meant  just  the 
contrary  and  the  employment  of  strong  pressure  at 
Turin,  where  the  Sardinian  Government  are  to  be  held 
responsible  for  all  the  consequences  if  they  do  not  put 
an  end  to  the  attacks  upon  Naples  by  their  subjects. 
Brenier  dwells  very  much  upon  Garibaldi  having  been 
convoyed  the  other  day  by  the  Sardinian  frigate,  which 
certainly  would  be  a  monstrous  proceeding  on  the  part 
of  Admiral  Persano  if  true,  but  it  had  not  yet  been 
confirmed  from  any  other  quarter.  Thouvenel  has 
also  sent  copies  of  despatches,  from  Gortchakow  and 
Schleinitz  to  the  Russian  and  Prussian  Ministers  at 
Paris,  saying  that  the  concessions  of  the  King  of 
Naples  are  such  as  to  lead  to  the  belief  that  the 
questions  at  issue  between  His  Majesty  and  his 
subjects  may  be  satisfactorily  arranged,  and  saying 
that  the  time  had  come  for  "  une  action  commune 


KING'S  UNCLES  37 

diplomatique  "  on  the  part  of  the  Great  Powers,  one 
object  of  which  is  to  be  the  maintenance  of  the  union 
of  Sicily  and  Naples  under  one  Crown. 

This  is  the  diplomatic  jargon  in  which  they  convey 
the  proposal  for  a  direct  interference  in  the  affairs  of 
this  country,  and  France,  having  the  same  leaning, 
will  find  herself  backed  by  Russia,  Prussia,  and 
Austria,  leaving  us  to  stand  by  ourselves  as  the 
advocates  of  non-interference. 

If  they  insist  I  suppose  it  will  be  carried  out,  but  as 
long  as  we  don't  join  in  anything  of  the  kind,  I  don't 
see  what  more  we  could  do. 

There  is  still  much  chance  that  events  may  go  so 
fast  as  to  baffle  all  the  intentions  of  France  and  the 
Northern  Powers,  and  if  Garibaldi  snaps  his  fingers 
at  Victor  Emmanuel's  orders  not  to  attack  the 
Continent,  but  comes  across  with  some  force,  I  believe 
the  fate  of  the  Royal  Family  would  very  soon  be 
decided. 

The  King's  next  brother,  Count  Trani,  Filangieri 
used  to  speak  of  as  the  "  Mouchard  "  of  the  Queen- 
Mother,  sitting  in  the  council  and  carrying  everything 
to  her.  Count  Trapani,  the  King's  uncle,  though  he 
voted  in  the  council  for  granting  the  Constitution,  is 
at  the  bottom  of  and  inspires  all  the  reactionist  hopes 
that  still  prevail  strongly  in  the  army.  Count  Aquila, 
another  uncle,  has  been  giving  himself  out  as  a 
tremendous  Liberal,  but  is  not  trusted  by  a  soul:  he 
has  been  hanging  on  to  the  French  for  some  time  past, 
and  he  and  the  busy  B.  hunted  in  couples  during  the 
whole  of  the  struggle  with  the  King  to  get  the 
Constitution,  etc. 

At  the  time,  I  heard  that  he  was  working  with  the 
object  of  getting  the  King  to  go,  and  of  taking  the 
Regency  for  himself,  and  now  it  seems  so  certain  that 
it  was  so  that  some  of  the  Ministers  were  for  packing 
him  off,  and  had  obtained  the  King's  consent,  but  the 
majority  of  the  Council  was  against  it.    To  prevent 


38  NAPLES  [i860 

it  from  having  a  purely  reactionist  appearance, 
Count  Trapani  would  have  been  sent  at  the  same 
time. 

Count  Aquila  is  at  the  head  of  the  navy,  and  the 
recent  cases  of  mutiny  and  misconduct  hi  that  service 
are  said  to  have  been  of  his  cooking. 

Brenier  professes  to  have  heard  of  no  suspicions 
against  His  Royal  Highness,  and  as  they  must  have 
reached  him  this  assumed  ignorance  looks  as  if  they 
were  pals. 

July  28. — Yesterday  De  Martino  told  me  that  it  is 
decided  not  to  evacuate  the  citadel  of  Messina,  a 
decision  no  doubt  taken  in  consequence  of  the  strong 
disapprobation  expressed  by  Brenier  of  the  deter- 
mination to  abandon  the  whole  island.  The  vagaries 
he  and  his  Government  are  playing  are  incessant.  In 
your  last  letter  you  ask  whether  it  is  true  that  the 
man  who  wounded  him  has  been  identified  and  is  a 
reactionist.  There  is  no  truth  in  this  at  all.  Two  or 
three  notorious  reactionists  and  leaders  of  that  branch 
of  the  Lazzaroni  have  been  shut  up  on  suspicion, 
without  there  being,  I  believe,  a  shadow  of  evidence 
against  them;  but  it  was  wished  that  the  blame  should 
fall  upon  that  party,  and  the  Government  gratified  the 
French  Minister  by  taking  up  these  individuals,  who 
are  happily  so  generally  hated  that  no  one  thinks 
of  finding  fault  with  their  being  kept  in  a  little 
seclusion. 

Bosco  and  his  troops,  whom  Garibaldi  had  let  out 
from  Milazzo,  have  been  arriving  at  Castellamare 
during  the  last  two  days,  and  one  good  result  of  this 
is  that  the  rascally  8th  Regiment,  which  has  been 
stationed  there  to  our  great  discomfort,  is  to  be  sent 
off  to  Calabria,  being  replaced  by  the  1st,  which  is 
well  spoken  of. 

Admiral  Mundy  told  me  yesterday  that  he  had 
received  from  the  Sardinian  Admiral,  Persano,  a  hint 
that  Garibaldi  was  just  going  to  start  for  the  Con- 


MURDER  AT  SCAFATI  39 

tinent,  so  that,  if  not  stopped  by  the  King's  mandate, 
we  shall  have  stirring  events  before  long. 

It  is  quite  true  that  Persano  convoyed  Garibaldi  to 
Milazzo.  By  the  bye,  it  is  a  curious  coincidence  that 
the  American  ship  which  was  at  Palermo  during  the 
siege,  and  whose  captain  is  of  course  a  good  Italian 
patriot,  is  at  this  moment  so  short  of  powder  that  she 
cannot  even  fire  a  salute — or  rather  she  was,  as  she 
has  now  borrowed  from  Admiral  Mundy.  Can  you 
guess  how  this  came  about  ? 

July  29. — At  Scafati,  the  next  station  to  Pompeii, 
the  people  have  been  murdering  the  proprietor  of  a 
large  mill,  and  anyone  who  expresses  the  slightest 
disapproval  of  the  measure  is  threatened  with  the 
same  treatment.  I  believe  his  offence  was  that  of 
being  a  Swiss  or  a  German,  and  the  other  foreigners 
employed  there  dare  not  now  show  themselves,  but 
this  is  the  only  outrage  I  have  heard  of  for  some 
time  past. 

July  31. — In  his  political  journal  of  the  19th, 
Goodwin  (Consul  at  Palermo)  says:  "  It  would  be  well 
if  public  spirit  kept  pace  with  private  activity.  The 
case  is  otherwise.  The  support  given  to  Garibaldi  has 
been  slender  compared  to  the  resources  of  the  country. 
The  city  of  Palermo  has  given  1,000L.,  and  other 
towns,  etc.,  etc.,  making  up  in  all  about  5,0Q0L.  The 
mining  towns  of  Girgenti  and  Aragona  have  given 
350L.  between  them;  Catania,  Caltanisetta,  and 
Trapani  have  given  little  or  nothing.  Manifestos  and 
addresses  make  a  grand  show  in  the  papers,  but  men, 
money,  and  materials  are  wanting."  This  account 
agrees  with  every  one  that  I  have  heard  from  the  most 
opposite  sources,  and  makes  Garibaldi's  feat  still 
more  marvellous  than  it  otherwise  would  be;  but  it 
gives  a  bad  look-out  for  the  future. 

I  found  De  Martino  yesterday  very  much  put  out 
at  Lord  John's  having  said,  according  to  Thouvenel, 
that  Her  Majesty's  Government  not  only  will  not  join 


40  NAPLES  [i860 

in  helping  to  prevent  Garibaldi  from  crossing  to  the 
mainland,  but  that  they  will  protest  against  it  if  the 
French  propose  to  do  it  alone. 

The  night  before  last  a  grand  row  was  announced 
as  positively  to  come  off  in  Naples;  but,  as  we  have 
these  positive  assurances  about  twice  every  week,  we 
are  getting  used  to  them  and  don't  feel  any  great 
alarm.  However,  this  one  was  really  to  have  taken 
place,  it  seems,  but  at  the  last  moment  a  sudden 
thought  struck  the  combatants,  and  they  determined 
to  swear  eternal  friendship,  instead  of  cutting  each 
other's  throats,  so  the  evening  was  spent  in  the  most 
harmonious  fraternisation  between  the  troops  and  the 
people. 

By  the  way,  you  must  recollect  that,  when  we  now 
speak  of  the  Lazzaroni,  we  no  longer  mean  the 
Sanfedisti,  who  were  ready  to  cut  all  Liberal  throats, 
for  these  have  for  the  moment  disappeared  from  the 
face  of  the  earth,  and  the  voice  of  the  Lazzaroni  is  now 
held  to  represent  the  honest  popular  voice  prepared  to 
shout  for  liberty  and  order. 

The  Lazzaroni  have  long  been  divided  into  two 
parties,  the  Liberal,  living  chiefly  in  the  upper  part 
of  the  town,  and  the  Sanfedisti,  or  Court  party,  living 
about  the  port  and  the  Santa  Lucia,  which  last  were 
kept  regularly  in  the  pay  of  the  Court,  a  good  many, 
perhaps  five  or  six  thousand,  being  armed  and  kept 
faithful  by  the  promise  that  whenever  there  was  an 
outbreak  they  should  have  the  privilege  of  pillaging 
the  houses  and  shops  of  all  suspected  of  Liberalism. 

Their  chief  organiser  and  colonel  was  the  notorious 
Marella,  who,  from  having  been,  I  believe,  himself  one 
of  the  Lazzaroni,  had  risen,  through  the  liberality  of 
the  secret  police,  to  be  a  man  of  considerable  prosperity, 
owning  a  very  large  solid-looking  house  on  the  Chiaja 
and  two  of  the  most  fashionable  of  the  bathing 
establishments  in  the  Villa  Keale.  This  worthy  and 
his  two  sons  are  now  in  prison,  on  the  accusation,  I 


LAZZARONI  41 

believe,  of  having  broken  Brenier's  head,  but  without 
a  jot  of  evidence  against  them;  and  his  whole  gang  is 
broken  up,  many  having  come  round  to  the  Liberal 
party,  which  they  now  think  the  winning  side ;  but  if 
the  soldiers  were  to  succeed  in  getting  up  a  good 
reactionary  movement  we  should  pretty  soon  find 
them  all  coining  out  from  their  holes  and  corners  to 
take  part  in  the  plunder. 

August  1. — Perhaps  you  read  in  The  Times  the 
other  day  a  lamentable  account  of  an  individual  found 
in  the  prison  here,  into  which  he  had  been  put  at  the 
request  of  the  Roman  police.  I  went  with  Villamarina 
(the  Sardinian  Minister)  to  see  the  poor  wretch,  who 
had  been  kept  about  two  years  in  the  Roman  and  four 
in  the  Neapolitan  prisons,  without  ever  having  been 
tried;  but  a  more  uninteresting  martyr  I  have  never 
beheld.  He  would  not  give  his  real  name  or  history, 
and  it  was  pretty  clear  that  he  had  either  something 
very  discreditable  to  conceal  or  that  he  meditated 
some  revenge  against  someone.  We  gathered  that 
he  had  been  a  suspected  agent  of  Mazzini.  There 
seemed  no  ground  for  considering  him  a  Neapolitan, 
but  he  would  give  no  clue  to  his  real  nationality.  It 
now  turns  out  that  he  was  one  of  the  persons  suspected 
of  wishing  to  assassinate  the  Emperor  Napoleon,  and 
I  suspect  that  he  may  very  likely  have  been  kept  all 
this  time  out  of  mischief  at  the  suggestion  of  France 
to  the  Roman  police,  who,  getting  tired  of  him,  passed 
him  on  here. 

Castellamare  was  last  night  roused  out  of  its  slumber 
by  an  alarm  given  of  the  approach  of  vessels  full  of 
Garibaldians.  The  garrison  was  called  to  arms,  and 
the  railroad  was  busy  all  night  bringing  fresh  troops 
from  Torre  delF  Annunziata  to  be  ready  to  oppose 
their  landing  in  the  morning ;  but  when  the  day  broke 
the  formidable  invaders  turned  out  to  be  two  small 
coasting  craft  loaded  with  limestone. 

August  6. — Though  we  have  not  had  any  more 


42  NAPLES  [i860 

alarms  at  Castellamare  itself,  we  live  in  a  constant 
succession  of  rumours  of  landings  at  different  places, 
so  that  we  shall  be  sure  to  disbelieve  it  when  it  does 
come;  and,  as  Admiral  Persano  arrived  here  three 
days  ago,  it  is  generally  supposed  that  we  shall  not 
have  very  much  longer  to  wait,  and  the  Admiral 
himself  showed  Admiral  Mundy  a  letter  he  had  just 
had  from  Garibaldi,  saying  that  he  had  written  to 
King  Victor  Emmanuel  to  say  that  he  could  not  listen 
to  his  advice  not  to  cross  the  Straits,  and  asking 
permission  to  do  so  on  the  15th. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  he  would  pause  in 
his  progress,  and  if  the  King's  letter  was  really  the 
meaningless  production  given  in  the  Nord,  the  whole 
thing  was  a  joke,  for  it  could  not  possibly  have  any 
real  effect.  It  is  impossible  to  take  implicitly  the 
report  of  a  Neapolitan,  but  according  to  General 
Clary,  who  had  an  interview  with  Garibaldi  at  Messina, 
the  Dictator  has  still  enough  on  his  hands  to  keep  the 
world  in  hot  water  for  some  little  time  to  come.  The 
programme  he  announced  is,  first  Naples,  then  the 
Marches,  then  Venetia,  and  finally  Savoy  and  Nice, 
after  which  he  is  to  rest  on  his  laurels. 

What  do  you  think  of  the  private  advice  of  the 
Emperor  to  Cavour,  which  I  mention  in  a  note  to  Lord 
John:  "  Do  nothing  to  help  the  King  of  Naples,  and 
do  not  work  openly  against  him;  if  he  falls,  so  much 
the  better  for  you/'  and  this  at  a  moment  when  he  is 
professing  to  do  all  he  can  to  save  the  King  ? 

A  resolution  taken  by  this  Government  to  dismiss 
the  foreign  troops  was  abandoned,  as  I  am  almost 
certain,  through  Brenier's  opposition  to  the  measure. 
The  French  here  seem  to  be  very  fierce  against 
Garibaldi,  and  I  am  told  that  the  young  naval  officers 
are  loud  in  their  abuse  of  him,  and  are  beginning  to 
show  an  anxiety  to  have  some  of  their  people  on  shore. 

The  non-naval  Powers  are  beginning  to  send  their 
subjects  to  me  to  secure  British  protection  in  the 


ROYAL  FAMILY  43 

event  of  trouble,  and  I  do  not  discourage  them,  for  the 
effect  is  not  bad  when  they  show  a  preference  for  us : 
we  shall  have  the  Swiss,  the  Prussians,  Hanoverians, 
Saxons,  Wurtembergers,  and  Belgians,  and  perhaps 
more  before  we  have  done  with  it. 

Thank  goodness,  I  do  not  the  least  fear  that  the 
Court  will  ask  for  asylum  in  an  English  ship,  as  there 
are  Spaniards  here,  on  board  of  which,  I  take  it  for 
granted,  His  Majesty  would  go.  There  is  a  possible 
event,  upon  which  I  have  not,  however,  thought  it 
necessary  to  ask  for  provisional  instructions,  as,  I 
believe,  some  of  my  colleagues  have  done — I  mean  the 
possibility  of  the  King  going  to  Gaeta  and  inviting  the 
Foreign  Ministers  to  accompany  him.  My  own  feeling 
would  be  entirely  against  going  with  him  (and  of  course 
if  the  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  did  not  go  it  would 
be  out  of  the  question),  but  when  the  time  comes  I 
shall  telegraph  for  instructions,  and  in  the  meantime 
you  may  tell  Lord  John  that  it  is  possible  the  question 
may  some  day  be  put  to  him ;  but  you  may  say  that  I 
myself  think  that  the  best  thing  would  be  that  I 
should  continue  here,  keeping  the  Intrepid  gunboat, 
which  would  carry  me  back  and  forward  to  Gaeta 
once  or  twice  a  week  to  see  De  Martino ;  but  though  I 
am  accredited  to  the  King  I  see  no  reason  why  I  should 
be  tied  to  his  tail,  so  as  to  make  a  political  demonstra- 
tion of  adherence  to  him. 

August  8. — This  unfortunate  Royal  Family  seems 
bent  on  making  itself  contemptible  to  the  end  of  the 
chapter,  but  even  from  them  one  could  hardly  have 
expected  anything  like  the  last  proceeding  of  the 
Count  of  Syracuse,*  who  two  days  ago  told  The 
Times  "  own  correspondent '  that  he  had  sent  to 
King  Victor  Emmanuel  his  adhesion  to  the  annexa- 
tion, and  that  it  had  been  accepted.  Till  within  the 
last  fortnight  ' '  our  own  correspondent ' '  has  had  a 
sort  of    idea  that  the  Count  of  Syracuse   might  be 

*  Uncle  to  King  Francis. 


44  NAPLES  [i860 

erected  into  a  King  in  due  time;  but  latterly  he  has 
become  convinced  that,  if  the  present  King  goes,  his 
whole  kith  and  kin  must  go  with  him,  and  he  was 
astounded  by  this  declaration,  and  asked  what  His 
Royal  Highness  meant  by  giving  his  adhesion  to  the 
annexation,  and  whether  he  had  become  a  Sardinian 
subject. 

He  said  Yes,  that  he  was  now  a  Sardinian  subject, 
and  would  soon  be  the  only  Bourbon  Prince  who  could 
live  in  Italy;  and,  on  being  further  questioned,  said 
that  the  King  here  did  not  yet  know  it,  but  would 
do  so  the  following  day.  What  followed  was  very 
amusing.  "  Our  own  correspondent "  telegraphed  his 
news  to  The  Times,  not  mentioning  how  he  heard  it; 
but  his  telegram,  as  he  might  have  guessed,  was  not 
forwarded,  and  he  was  summoned  first  to  see  the 
Minister  of  the  Interior  and  then  the  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  who  assured  him  that  the  thing  was 
not  true. 

Wreford,  the  correspondent,  is  quite  a  truthful  man, 
and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Prince  told  him 
what  he  says;  but  it  seems  to  be  no  less  certain  that 
neither  the  Government  nor  the  King  knew  of  this 
royal  desertion  till  they  learnt  it  from  the  telegram  of 
the  newspaper  correspondent. 

I  was  not  able  yesterday  to  find  either  De  Martino  or 
Villamarina,  so  could  not  get  enough  of  the  story  on 
authority  to  send  it  home  by  yesterday's  messenger, 
for  I  should  have  liked  to  say  at  the  same  time  what 
the  Government  were  prepared  to  do. 

Syracuse  says  that  the  Sardinian  ships  of  war  now 
here  are  put  at  his  disposition,  but  I  don't  know  what 
he  means  by  this. 

While  things  of  this  kind  are  going  on  I  often  do  not 
send  home  all  the  information  I  might  get  if  I  went 
oftener  to  De  Martino,  who  is  perfectly  open  and  frank, 
and  much  disposed  to  ask  my  opinion  and  advice, 
which  I  think  it  much  better  not  to  give  too  much; 


TRAVELLERS  FROM  SICILY  45 

for,  if  I  did  get  into  the  habit  of  being  consulted  daily, 
it  would  almost  infallibly  give  us  the  appearance  at 
least  of  being  more  mixed  up  in  matters  here  than 
would  be  at  all  desirable.  It  would  be  very  easy  to 
acquire  a  name  for  having  "  great  influence  over  the 
Government,"  which  might  be  flattering  to  one's 
vanity,  but  certain  to  be  inconvenient  sooner  or  later. 
For  instance,  there  is  the  question  of  the  foreign 
troops  which  De  Martino  spoke  of  the  other  day,  and 
I  said  that  their  being  kept  on  was  a  violation  of  the 
Constitution  and  an  irritation  to  the  people,  in  both 
of  which  he  perfectly  agreed;  but  then  he  asked 
whether,  at  a  moment  when  an  invasion  was  immi- 
nent, the  Government  would  be  justified  in  disbanding 
4,000  of  the  best  troops  they  had  for  repelling  it. 

There  is  one  piece  of  advice  I  should  be  uncommonly 
tempted  to  give,  and  that  is  that  the  King  should  pack 
off  every  single  member  of  his  family — man,  woman, 
and  child — except  his  wife.  The  Count  of  Syracuse 
has  thrown  him  off;  Aquila  is  plotting  against  him,  for 
himself  or  for  France;  Trapani  is  intriguing  as  hard 
as  he  can  for  reaction  and  divine  right,  of  which  Trani 
seems  to  be  looked  to  as  the  future  champion;  while 
the  Count  of  Caserta,  the  next  brother,  is  said  to  have 
more  brains  and  devil  than  any  of  them,  and  has  been 
bred  up  by  the  same  old  mother,  who  certainly  has 
done  enough  to  entitle  her  to  pass  the  rest  of  her 
days  in  tranquillity  in  foreign  lands. 

I  saw  yesterday  some  English  travellers  just  arrived 
from  Sicily — enthusiastic,  as  they  all  are,  for  Gari- 
baldi, and  as  full  of  contempt  and  indignation  against 
the  Sicilians.  In  fact,  I  have  not  yet  seen  one  single 
person  who  has  been  there  who  does  not  speak  in 
the  same  way,  and,  according  to  my  last  informant, 
Garibaldi  said  exactly  the  same  thing  to  himself. 
They  give  little  or  no  money  for  the  cause,  very  few 
soldiers,  and  at  the  same  time  are  full  of  envy  and 
jealousy  of  their  liberators.     It  certainly  is  a  his- 


46  NAPLES  [i860 

torical  fact  that  in  1848,  while  they  were  for  a  year 
entire  masters  of  the  island,  they  organised  nothing 
for  themselves,  and  this  is  perhaps  as  strong  an 
argument  as  could  be  given  in  favour  of  annexation, 
for  they  appear  thoroughly  unfitted  to  take  care  of 
themselves. 

The  truth  of  the  Syracuse  affair  I  have  not  yet 
thoroughly  cleared  up,  but  a  very  amusing  effect  of 
his  vagary  has  been  to  send  his  latterly  ultra-Liberal 
brother,  Aquila,  slap  back  to  reaction.  The  latter 
meant  to  have  started  himself  as  the  Liberal  one  of  the 
family,  and  now  his  brother  has  taken  the  wind  so 
completely  out  of  his  sails  that  he  is  driven  to  try 
something  else.  Was  there  ever  such  a  set  ?  The 
Government  are  seriously  thinking  of  having  the 
whole  of  that  generation  packed  off. 

The  Government  have  just  put  an  end  to  one  of  the 
great  means  of  reactionist  intrigue  by  breaking  up  the 
King's  private  Chancellerie,  and  putting  the  telegraphs 
so  much  under  the  Minister  of  the  Interior  that  His 
Majesty  cannot  carry  on  any  further  correspondence 
with  the  provincial  authorities,  who  have,  besides,  had 
their  cyphers  changed,  so  that  no  private  corre- 
spondence can  be  carried  on  with  the  Princes  or  royal 
household,  which  latter,  moreover,  has  been  well 
cleaned  out. 

That  poor  man  De  Martino  is  much  to  be  pitied, 
for  he  undertook  an  almost  hopeless  job  in  trying  to 
save  the  dynasty,  and  as  his  resignation  would  now 
probably  bring  a  general  smash  he  is  in  some  sort  tied 
to  the  concern,  and  his  great  ambition  is  only  to  get  on 
as  far  as  the  meeting  of  the  Chambers,  which  is  in  a 
month  from  this  time,  and  still  long  to  look  forward  to. 

August  11. — The  panic  in  Naples  appears  to  be 
increasing  and  spreading  every  day,  and  it  must 
be  confessed  there  is  cause  enough  to  be  anxious. 
Amongst  other  things  that  cause  it,  there  is  just  now 
a  report  that  a  number  of  persons  have  been  found 


ANXIETY  OF  SAEDINIAN  CABINET       47 

wearing  the  uniform  of  the  National  Guard  without 
belonging  to  it,  and  armed  with  revolvers,  4,000  of 
which  are  said  to  have  been  distributed  by  Count 
Aquila  among  persons  intended  to  be  employed  in  the 
reaction.  What  the  real  truth  of  this  is  I  cannot  yet 
say,  but  it  is  quite  certain  that  he  is  working  in  that 
direction  at  present  as  hard  as  he  was  in  the  other  a 
short  time  ago;  and  he  is  now  pressing  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  state  of  siege  and  a  retrograde  Ministry, 
in  which  he  is  being  keenly  backed  by  Brenier.  His 
Royal  Highness  had  the  face  the  other  day  in  the 
King's  presence  to  complain  that  the  Count  of 
Syracuse  was  aiming  at  taking  the  position  he  had 
destined  for  himself  when  His  Majesty  has  to  bolt. 

Villamarina  has  instructions  to  try  by  all  means  to 
prevent  the  arrival  of  Garibaldi,  as  Cavour  says  there 
is  nothing  he  dreads  so  much  as  the  establishment 
of  a  Dictatorship  here  such  as  that  of  Palermo,  and 
that  Garibaldi  is  surrounded  at  present  by  such  a  set 
of  republican  canaille  that  his  arrival  here  would  be 
disastrous.  In  fact,  it  is  clear  that  the  Sardinian 
Cabinet  is  in  a  most  monstrous  fright,  and  their  in- 
structions now  are  that  a  movement  should  be 
encouraged,  so  that  the  revolution  mav  be  accom- 
plished  by  the  Neapolitans  themselves  and  a  Govern- 
ment of  some  kind  established  by  the  nation,  so  that 
Garibaldi  should  have  no  excuse  for  coming.  They 
seem  to  me  to  forget  that,  though  a  movement  may 
perhaps  be  excited  or  provoked,  it  is  by  no  means 
impossible  that  it  may  be  suppressed,  and  how  would 
matters  then  stand  ? 

However,  the  present  instructions  to  the  Sardinian 
agents  are  that  they  should  not  give  the  support  to 
Garibaldi  here  that  "  they  gave  in  Sicily,"  and  these 
words  are  a  quotation,  and  not  my  own.  In  the 
meantime  there  is  every  appearance  of  an  attack  soon 
to  be  made  from  Sicily,  where  an  army  of  about 
20,000  men  is  collected  and  numbers  of  large  boats 


48  NAPLES  [i860 

prepared  for  carrying  them.  The  Faro  is  fortified 
with  heavy  gnus,  "  stolen  "  from  the  arsenal  at  Genoa. 

At  Messina  the  Neapolitan  General  Clary  is  recalled 
for  having  threatened  to  bombard  the  town  if  a 
landing  was  attempted  in  Calabria,  which  would  have 
been  a  direct  violation  of  his  own  Convention  with 
Medici.*  The  advance  of  Bosco  from  Messina  towards 
Milazzo,  which  ended  in  the  capture  of  that  place  and 
the  evacuation  of  it  by  the  royal  troops,  now  turns  out 
not  to  have  been  a  movement  of  pure  defence,  as  was 
said,  the  Neapolitan  Government  having  undertaken 
to  rest  on  the  defensive ;  but  the  King  privately  ordered 
the  advance,  writing  to  the  General  that  it  was 
their  time  to  make  a  great  coup,  and  leaving  the 
Ministers  in  total  ignorance  of  what  he  had  ordered. 

There  had  altogether  been  a  rivalry  in  intrigue  and 
falsehood  between  the  Neapolitan  Court  and  generals 
and  the  Sardinian  Government,  in  which  it  is  difficult 
to  say  which  have  proved  themselves  the  greatest 
adepts.  Brenier,  as  I  think  I  told  you,  is  again 
strongly  in  the  reaction,  and  at  the  same  moment 
Prince  Napoleon  is  writing  to  Victor  Emmanuel  that 
the  moment  for  the  liberation  of  Italy  is  come,  and 
that  courage  on  his  part  is  all  that  is  required. 

I  saw  to-day  M.  Devincenzi,  who  says  he  knows  you 
all  well,  and  saw  Lord  John  just  before  leaving 
London.  He  is  very  much  alarmed  at  the  state  in 
which  he  finds  things  here,  and  is  disposed  to  blame 
me  for  not  trying  to  counteract  Brenier's  bad  advice, 
not  with  the  Ministers,  but  with  the  King. 

I  am  certain,  however,  that  I  am  right  in  not  asking 
to  see  the  King  to  give  him  advice  which  he  does  not 
ask,  and  which  he  would  not  follow  when  he  knew  that 

*  Medici,  Giacomo,  6.  1817,  d.  1882.  Patriot  and  soldier. 
Sailed  for  Sicily  with  Garibaldi's  second  expedition,  took  part  in 
the  whole  campaign,  forced  Messina  to  capitulate  after  a  siege 
of  eight  days;  joined  the  Regular  Army  and  was  appointed 
Military  Commandant  of  Palermo.  Senator  in  1870,  and  Marquis 
of  the  Vascello  and  first  A.D.C.  to  the  King  in  1876 


ATTEMPT  ON  MAN-OF-WAR  49 

we  should  not  stand  by  him  if  he  did  take  it;  and 
if  he  did,  it  would  be  difficult  not  to  be  bound  to  give 
him  more  support  than  desirable. 

August  15. — We  had  our  first  alarm  at  Castellamare 
the  night  before  last.  I  was  just  going  to  bed,  about 
a  quarter  to  twelve,  when  a  sharp  fire  of  musketry- 
began  down  at  the  harbour,  which  is  where  the  prison 
is,  in  which  are  confined  about  1,000  convicts,  whom 
we  supposed  to  be  breaking  loose,  and  whose  escape 
would  be  a  greater  danger  to  all  the  non-combatants 
and  peaceable  inhabitants  of  the  town  than  any 
common  political  movement. 

After  this  firing  had  gone  on  some  little  time,  some 
additional  excitement  was  produced  by  the  cannon 
beginning  also  to  fire ;  but,  although  all  this  was  taking 
place  very  close  to  us,  we  could  neither  see  it  nor 
succeed  in  getting  any  correct  information  as  to  what 
was  going  on,  and  by  one  o'clock,  or  soon  after,  every- 
thing got  quiet,  and  it  was  clear  that  the  attempt, 
whatever  it  was,  had  failed. 

We  had  seen  a  boat  (though  the  night  was  dark) 
put  off  from  the  Renown,  and  felt  no  doubt  it  was  a 
message  sent  to  tell  us  the  news,  and  shortly  after  the 
commander,  Lethbridge,  came  and  said  he  was  sent 
to  say  that  all  was  quiet  again ;  but  at  that  time  he 
was  under  the  impression  that  it  had  been  a  movement 
of  the  prisoners,  some  of  whom  are  in  an  old  hulk  at  the 
entrance  of  the  harbour,  and  it  was  only  after  he 
left  us  that  he  found  out  the  real  facts,  which  he  sent 
up  to  let  us  know  by  an  Englishman  he  met  down  in 
the  town.  It  turned  out  that  it  had  been  a  most 
dashing  attempt  to  cut  out  and  carry  off  a  Neapolitan 
two-decker  which  is  lying  close  to  the  arsenal,  preparing 
for  sea.  A  steamer,  supposed  to  be  the  Veloce,  whose 
captain  deserted  with  her  to  Garibaldi  a  few  weeks  ago, 
came  quietly  in  without  showing  lights  and  brought 
up  close  to  the  arsenal,  answering,  when  hailed,  that 
she  was  a  Frenchman :  almost  immediately  after  they 

5 


50  NAPLES  [i860 

lowered  boats  and  tried  to  cut  the  hawsers  of  the 
ship  which  lay  close  by;  but  the  people  were  baffled 
by  finding  her  moored  with  a  very  heavy  chain,  and 
then  they  tried  to  carry  her  by  boarding,  whereupon 
the  firing  commenced  from  both  sides,  and  ended  by 
the  aggressors  being  beaten  off,  there  being  on  the 
ship  one  man  killed  and  four  wounded,  one  of  the 
hitter  being  the  Captain  Acton  who  had  commanded 
the  Stromboli  at  Marsala,  when  Garibaldi  landed,  and 
who  has  been  not  more  than  a  week  since  acquitted 
by  the  Court  of  Inquiry  of  having  favoured  the 
landing. 

The  strange  steamer  at  first  lay  so  much  in  a  line 
with  the  French  ship  Eylau  that  the  Neapolitans  did 
not  dare  to  fire  cannon  at  her,  and  even  some  of  the 
musket  balls  fell  on  board  the  Frenchman,  and  when 
she  retired  she  slipped  between  her  and  the  Renown, 
so  as  to  make  it  impossible  for  many  shots  to  be  fired 
at  her,  though  as  it  was  some  balls  went  near  both 
ships.  It  certainly  was  a  wonderfully  plucky  pro- 
ceeding, but  they  must  have  counted  on  treachery  on 
the  part  of  the  Neapolitans,  or  they  never  could  have 
tried  such  a  wild  scheme. 

You  may  imagine  the  panic  this  night  attack  created 
in  the  weak-minded  inhabitants  of  this  fashionable 
summer  resort;  for,  though  there  was  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  any  of  us  were  in  danger,  firing  in  anger 
has  a  very  ugly  sound,  and  it  having  taken  place  at 
night  of  course  added  to  the  fear.  Annie  was  not  in 
the  least  disturbed,  and  took  the  matter  very  quietly, 
entering  into  the  spirit  of  the  thing  as  soon  as  she 
knew  the  dashing  nature  of  the  attempt ;  but  I  believe 
our  house  was  almost  the  only  one  where  so  much 
philosophy  was  shown,  and  Brenier's  was  full  of 
refugees  long  after  we  were  quietly  snoring  again. 

In  Naples,  at  the  same  time,  matters  were  looking 
very  ugly,  and  there  the  panic  that  prevailed  really 
had  some  good  cause;  for  there  was  no  doubt  that  the 


QUEEN-MOTHER  ORDERED  TO  LEAVE  51 

Count  of  Aquila  was  pushing  on  a  reaction  in  order  to 
carry  out  his  own  wild  schemes.  As  far  as  I  can 
gather  of  his  game,  it  was  to  advise  reactionary 
measures  which  he  knew  must  provoke  an  immediate 
collision  with  the  Liberals,  which  he  meant  to  take 
advantage  of,  fancying  that,  by  throwing  himself  into 
the  arms  of  the  extreme  Liberals  and  appealing  to 
universal  suffrage,  he  might  be  elected  vicar  or  regent 
in  the  place  of  the  King.  The  scheme  seems  so  wild 
as  to  be  almost  incredible,  but  still  it  was  on  the  point 
of  being  tried;  and  it  is,  I  believe,  certain  that  he  was 
distributing  large  numbers  of  revolvers  among  the 
lowest  of  the  people,  whom  he  meant  to  back  him 
up ;  but  after  a  tremendous  struggle  with  the  Govern- 
ment he  has  at  last  been  shipped  off,  under  the  nominal 
pretext  of  going  to  England  on  matters  connected 
with  the  Marine,  of  which  he  was  Commandant. 
During  the  fight  for  the  mastery  between  him  and  the 
Ministry  he  is  said  to  have  told  De  Martino  that  he 
would  not  have  twenty-four  hours  to  live ;  and  Pianelli, 
the  Minister  of  War,  was  threatened  with  being  "  shot 
down  "  by  his  own  soldiers. 

In  consequence  of  the  attempt  at  Castellamare  a 
state  of  siege  has  been  proclaimed  at  Naples.  De 
Martino  was  averse  to  it,  and  only  consented  on 
condition  of  the  Queen-Mother  being  absolutely  packed 
off,  and  the  National  Guards  of  the  provinces  being 
supplied  with  arms,  of  which  they  are  still  almost 
deficient. 

The  King  has  written  to  his  step -mother  to  say  she 
must  go  to  Marseilles,  and  naming  the  persons  to  go 
with  her.  De  Martino  also  told  me  that  a  thing  I  had 
been  working  at  quietly  for  some  little  time  is  decided 
upon,  and  that,  if  the  landing  of  Garibaldi  takes  place, 
the  King  will  go  out  to  meet  him,  and  leave  none  of 
his  army  behind  in  Naples.  It  will  give  him  a  larger 
force  to  bring  against  the  invader,  and,  if  he  beats 
him,  he  will  march  back  into  Naples  without  the  least 


52  NAPLES  [i860 

trouble,  and,  whichever  way  things  go,  it  diminishes 
the  chances  of  atrocities  in  the  town. 

The  publication  by  Garibaldi  of  the  Sardinian 
Statute  for  Sicily  is  a  very  suspicious  proceeding,  and 
gives  good  ground  for  supposing  that  he  does  not 
believe  that  the  vote  of  the  country  would  be  for  the 
unconditional  annexation;  and  therefore  he  chooses 
to  assume  that  the  annexation  was  de  facto  voted  by 
the  people  when  they  welcomed  him  with  cries  of 
"  Viva  Vittorio  Emmanuele  1" 

The  letters  from  Palermo  say  that  the  Sicilians 
have  no  sort  of  intention  of  being  provincialised,  and 
that  they  would  not  send  deputies  to  a  central 
Parliament;  but  in  the  meantime  public  functionaries 
have  been  forced  to  take  a  new  oath  of  fidelity  to 
Victor  Emmanuel  and  the  Statute-. 

While  he  has  20,000  men  there,  there  can  be  no 
serious  opposition  made  to  him,  but  when  his  army 
crosses  to  the  mainland,  unless  he  does  his  work  very 
quickly,  he  may  find  troubles  spring  up  behind  him. 

The  French  Vice-Consul  at  Messina,  writing,  how- 
ever, with  a  very  evident  bias  against  him,  speaks  of 
his  prestige  being  much  diminished,  and  of  his  being 
spoken  of  in  the  most  contemptuous  terms  as  a 
politician.  There  is  also  a  disagreeable  occurrence 
which  will  alarm  the  moderate  people.  There  were 
about  900  Mazzinian  volunteers  who  had  been  drilling 
near  Leghorn,  who  were  supposed  to  have  been 
destined  for  the  Roman  States,  and  these  have  now 
gone  to  Sicily,  as  has  also  the  famous  Mazzinian, 
Colonel  La  Cicilia.  I  don't  think  we  can  now  doubt 
that  the  Mazzinians  believe  Garibaldi  to  be  doing  their 
work  for  them,  and  are  therefore  seconding  him  to  the 
best  of  their  power,  and  it  is  quite  evident  also  that 
the  Sardinian  Government  are  daily  getting  into  a 
greater  fright  as  to  the  turn  which  matters  may  take. 

August  17. — Villamarina's  language  yesterday  was 
a  good  confirmation  of  my  last  sentence.    He  has  in 


BERSAGLIERI  53 

fact  asked  that  a  considerable  force  of  Bersaglieri 
should  be  put  on  board  the  Sardinian  ships,  not  as 
troops,  but  as  a  kind  of  marines,  in  case  of  being 
wanted,  which  he  considers  they  may  be  either  if  the 
French  show  a  disposition  for  intervention,  or  if 
anarchy  and  republicanism  should  set  themselves  up 
here,  which  he  says  the  safety  of  Piedmont  will  make 
it  absolutely  necessary  to  put  down.  He  tells  Cavour 
that  he  does  not  ask  him  for  instructions,  but  that 
when  the  men  are  sent  he  will  act  as  he  knows  is  best ; 
and,  if  the  public  feeling  in  Sardinia  resents  any 
opposition  to  Garibaldi  his  proceedings  can  be  dis- 
avowed by  the  Government.  There  is  certainly  a 
change  coming  over  people's  feelings  here  about  the 
Dictator,  whose  arrival  was  looked  forward  to  with 
impatience  by  half  the  country,  and  now  many  people 
are  beginning  to  see  that  when  he  does  come  they  will 
be  absolutely  at  his  disposal  in  a  manner  they  do  not 
relish. 

It  was  no  easy  matter  the  other  day  to  get  Aquila 
off,  for,  I  believe,  he  began  by  refusing  to  budge ;  but 
the  Government  had  taken  the  precaution  of  ordering 
him  to  go  on  professional  duty  to  England  to  buy 
ships,  and  he  was  told  that  if  he  disobeyed  their  orders 
he  would  be  lodged  in  the  fortress,  and  His  Royal 
Highness  took  the  hint  and  consented  to  be  towed  out 
in  his  yacht,  while  the  Princess  went  in  a  Brazilian 
frigate. 

What  led  at  last  to  the  decision  to  send  him  off 
was  the  arrival  of  three  cases  of  revolvers  and  one  case 
of  pictures  of  him  waving  his  hat,  which  have  fallen 
into  the  hands  of  the  Government. 

I  did  not  know  till  yesterday  that  I  had  a  personal 
interest  in  getting  him  off,  but  I  hear  that  I  am  on  a 
list  of  those  who  were  to  be  done  for  if  his  plan  had 
come  off,  which  part  of  the  programme  I  hope  may 
be  omitted  in  the  next  performance  that  may  be 
decided  on. 


54  NAPLES  [i860 

August  20. — The  Bersaglieri  I  mentioned,  or  at  least 
some  of  them,  came  two  days  ago,  and  were  the  cause 
of  the  garrison  being  got  under  arms;  for  either  by 
stupidity  or  design  a  boatful  of  them  armed  with  their 
rifles  and  everything  apparently  ready  for  landing 
tried  first  to  pass  through  a  passage  under  one  of  the 
forts,  and  then  wanted  to  land  and  pass  round  it,  in 
both  of  which  operations  they  found  they  would  be 
opposed,  and  the  affair  created  no  little  excitement 
among  the  public,  who  not  unnaturally  |have  learnt 
to  look  upon  the  Sardinians  and  ,Garibaldians  as 
identical,  and  the  attempt  to  land  with  their  arms 
was  considered  very  impudent. 

During  the  state  of  siege,  as  our  officers  really  wish 
our  people  to  be  kept  out  of  harm's  way,  leave  from 
our  ships  has  been  stopped;  but  it  is  very  different 
with  the  Sardinians,  for  these  chasseurs,  who  are 
picked  infantry,  having  no  business  on  board  ship  at 
all,  have  been  parading  all  about  the  town,  fraternising 
with  the  soldiers  and  trying  to  debauch  them,  being 
in  fact  the  most  active  revolutionary  agents  that 
could  be  sent;  and  Admiral  Persano  appears  to  be  as 
unscrupulous  an  officer  as  an  unscrupulous  master 
could  wish  to  employ. 

I  mentioned  in  my  letter  of  the  11th  that  the 
Sardinian  Government  wished  a  revolution  to  be 
accomplished  without  Garibaldi  ;  he,  it  appears, 
wished  that  it  should  be  begun  without  him,  and  that 
he  should  arrive  by  the  invitation  of  the  revolted 
nation;  but  it  has  been  found  impossible  to  get  the 
people  to  move,  though  perhaps  these  Bersaglieri 
may  succeed  in  doing  so  by  persuading  tnem  that  the 
Sardinian  Government  are  already  sending  infantry 
to  support  them  as  soon  as  they  rise.  This  is  what 
at  this  moment  is  going  on  in  the  streets  of  Naples, 
and  if  it  was  possible  to  feel  the  slightest  possible 
interest  in  the  King  or  his  dynasty  the  proceedings  of 
the  "  Re  Galantuomo  '    would  certainly  excite  it. 


GAKIBALDI  LANDS  55 

We  should  have  to  go  back  a  long  way  to  find  such  a 
course  of  deliberate  underhand  work  as  has  been 
carried  on  by  our  Imperial  ally  and  our  pet  Constitu- 
tional King.  If  the  latter  would  even  now  behave 
like  a  gentleman  and  go  to  war  with  Naples  I  would 
forgive  him,  for  it  would  be  the  greatest  benefit  he 
could  confer  upon  Italy,  as  he  might  conquer  this 
country  and  place  it  at  once  under  a  regular  Govern- 
ment; but  the  deliberate  encouragement  of  a  revolu- 
tion which  neither  he  nor  anyone  else  can  be  sure  of 
guiding  until  it  has  spread  ruin  through  half  the 
Peninsula,  while  professing  friendship  to  his  victim 
all  the  time,  is  as  discreditable  as  anything  ever  done 
by  a  Bourbon. 

We  know  nothing  more  yet  of  the  six  steamers  which 
left  Cagliari  on  the  16th. 

My  letters  from  Messina  are  also  barren,  but  speak 
of  many  of  Garibaldi's  men  being  in  hospital  with  the 
malarial  fever.  A  Frenchman  who  came  from  there 
the  other  day  told  me  that  a  very  large  number  of 
Garibaldi's  men  were  leaving  him;  but  I  don't  believe 
it  at  all,  for  the  French  are  evidently  under  orders  just 
now  to  run  him  down  as  far  as  they  can. 

August  21. — Well,  at  last  he  has  landed  with  about 
4,000  men  at  the  toe  of  the  boot,  and  we  shall  soon 
be  out  of  our  pain,  one  way  or  the  other,  though  it  is 
very  likely  that  the  20,000  royal  troops  now  in 
Calabria  may  give  more  trouble  than  the  good  folks 
in  general  calculate.  The  Basilicata  is  up,  but  the 
importance  of  the  movement  is  not  known.  It  is 
quite  settled  at  present  that,  when  the  danger  ap- 
proaches, the  King  goes  to  meet  it  with  all  the  troops 
from  Naples,  a  great  blessing  for  us. 

August  25. — As  the  more  there  is  to  write  the  less 
time  there  is  for  writing,  it  is  not  easy  to  jot  down 
half  the  things  which,  both  for  your  sake  and  my 
own  I  should  like  to  remember.  The  card  house  is 
tumbling  down  as  fast  as  it  can,  and  if  it  goes  on  at  its 


56  NAPLES  [i860 

present  rate  the  process  does  not  promise  to  be  either 
long  or  sanguinary. 

The  whole  of  Calabria  has  fallen  into  Garibaldi's 
hands  almost  without  a  blow  being  struck,  and  of  the 
Neapolitan  army  there  nothing  now  remains  except, 
I  believe,  about  a  single  brigade  out  of  the  five  that 
were  in  those  provinces.  Some  seven  or  eight 
thousand  men  surrendered  at  discretion — on  what 
grounds  I  know  not — and  their  General,  with,  it  is 
said,  a  great  part  of  the  soldiers,  has  gone  over  to 
the  army  of  the  Dictator. 

A  traveller  who  came  up  from  Calabria  two  days 
ago  declares  that  the  country  is  quite  unanimous  in 
favour  of  Garibaldi,  even  in  parts  where  he  had  not 
yet  arrived. 

The  Basilicata  is  already  risen,  and  a  provisional 
Government  established  at  its  capital,  Potenza,  and 
throughout  the  rest  of  the  country  the  same  thing 
may  occur  at  any  moment ;  and  there  is  no  reason  why 
the  invaders  should  not  march  straight  to  Naples, 
or  at  least  to  within  a  very  short  distance  of  it,  and 
then  may  begin  the  unpleasant  part  of  the  business 
for  ourselves  personally,  and  for  those  who  look  to  us 
for  protection.  The  Government  still  apprehend 
reactionist  pillage  and  atrocities  of  all  kinds  if  there 
is  fighting  in  the  streets,  and  have  just  made  an  effort 
on  the  plea  of  humanity  and  the  interests  of  our 
countrymen  to  induce  us  to  come  to  their  assistance, 
and  put  ourselves  between  Garibaldi  and  them. 

I  was  in  hopes  of  getting  my  Sunday  quietly  at 
Castellamare,  but  while  I  was  still  on  board  the 
London,  where  we  had  gone  to  church,  De  Martino  and 
Brenier  made  their  appearance  to  talk  over  a  very  serious 
proposition.  This  was  that  the  English  and  French 
Ministers  should  help  to  bring  about  a  regular  neutra- 
lisation of  Naples,  so  that  there  should  be  no  fighting 
there,  and  that  the  inhabitants  and  the  property 
might  remain  secure.     The  result  was  most  desirable, 


SUGGESTED  NEUTRALISATION  57 

but  the  means  of  arriving  at  it  which  were  proposed  were 
not  at  all  to  my  taste,  for  the  suggestion  in  fact 
amounted  to  this — that  the  King  should  declare  the 
town  neutralised,  sending  out  of  it  all  the  troops  but 
the  ordinary  garrison,  and  that  Brenier  and  I  should 
let  Garibaldi  know  that  it  was  expected  he  would 
consent  to  consider  it  as  neutral  territory,  the  under- 
taking being  that  the  town  was  to  be  given  to  which- 
ever of  the  belligerents  finally  came  out  victorious.  We 
were,  in  fact,  to  be  the  stakeholders  who  were  to  hand 
over  the  prize  to  the  conqueror. 

It  is  not  pleasant  to  have  to  refuse  to  lend  a  hand  to 
prevent,  as  you  are  told,  the  massacre  and  pillage  of  a 
great  town,  but  it  was  so  clear  that  it  was  in  reality  an 
intervention  that  was  required  that  I  said  I  could 
certainly  not  consent  to  anything  of  the  kind,  for 
De  Martino  had  openly  said,  in  reply  to  my  question, 
that  the  neutralisation  must  be  imposed  upon 
Garibaldi  if  he  was  not  disposed  to  accept  it  volun- 
tarily. That,  of  course,  was  conclusive,  but  Brenier 
did  not  speak  nearly  so  plainly  as  I  did,  and,  I  thought, 
was  far  from  rejecting  the  notion  of  our  taking  the 
matter  in  hand. 

It  was  then  settled  that  there  should  be  a  meeting  of 
the  Corps  Diplomatique  at  De  Martino's  house,  at 
which  the  proposal  of  the  Government  should  be  made 
to  the  different  Ministers,  though  the  French,  English 
and  Sardinian  were  the  only  ones  who  could  have 
really  anything  to  say  in  the  business.  By  the  way, 
Brenier  tried  to  get  rid  of  having  Villamarina  by 
suggesting  that  only  the  representatives  of  the  great 
Powers  should  be  called;  but  I  insisted,  and  so  did 
De  Martino,  that  the  Sardinian  Minister  was  the  only 
useful  one  of  the  whole  lot  of  us.  And  so  it  turned 
out  at  the  meeting  held  this  evening  at  De  Martino's, 
where  I  again  said  I  would  not  be  a  party  to  demand- 
ing Garibaldi's  consent  to  the  neutralisation  scheme. 
I  insisted  that  the  proper  thing  would  be  for  the 


58  NAPLES  [i860 

Neapolitan  Government  to  propose  it  themselves  to 
Garibaldi,  saying  at  the  same  time  that  a  formal 
engagement  had  been  made,  in  the  presence  of  all  the 
Foreign  Ministers  in  Naples,  that  if  he  was  victorious 
in  the  war  the  town  should  be  given  up  to  him;  but 
the  old  objection  was  made  that  they  could  not  treat 
with  the  Sicilian  Dictator.  Was  there  ever  such 
nonsense — after  one  General  after  another  has  had  to 
negotiate  with  him  and  to  sign  capitulations  without 
number  ? 

At  last  it  was  started  (after  all  progress  seemed 
hopeless)  that  Villamarina  might  be  the  medium  of 
conveying  the  proposal  of  the  Neapolitan  Government, 
and  this  idea  was  happily  carried  out,  and  I  hope 
promises  well. 

When  it  was  suggested  to  him  he  at  once  saw  the 
advantage  it  would  be  for  his  King  to  appear  in  the 
character  of  the  saviour  of  one  of  his  future  capitals, 
and  he  said  he  was  ready  at  once  to  telegraph  to  Turin 
to  state  the  arrangement  the  Neapolitan  Government 
wished  to  make  to  save  needless  bloodshed,  in  which 
they  are  backed  by  the  whole  Corps  Diplomatique,  but 
that  there  being  a  difficulty  in  conveying  this  to  the 
Dictator,  His  Majesty  is  asked  by  Villamarina  if  he 
will  sanction  his  taking  it  himself  to  Garibaldi,  un- 
officially and  without  in  any  way  guaranteeing  the 
neutralisation. 

August  29. — Villamarina  has  been  refused  permission 
to  communicate  the  neutralisation  scheme  to  Garibaldi. 
De  Martino  has  sent  a  circular  to  the  Foreign  Ministers, 
saying  that  orders  had  been  given  to  the  Generals  to 
confine  their  action  to  country  beyond  the  walls,  and 
the  troops  are  to  be  reduced  to  the  ordinary  peace 
garrison,  and  that  all  fears  of  a  bombardment  are  to  be 
laid  aside. 

The  accounts  from  Calabria  were  that  an  entire 
brigade,  of  which  one  of  the  Generals  is  most  appro- 
priately named  Brigante,  had  laid  down  their  arms 


PLOTS  59 

and  the  Generals  taken  service  under  Garibaldi,  but  it 
turns  out  that  the  Generals  were  found  to  be  betray- 
ing them  by  their  men,  who,  on  making  the  discovery, 
killed  them,  as  thev  deserved. 

August  31. — This  doomed  race  of  Bourbons  seems 
determined  to  be  true  to  its  traditions  to  the  end,  and 
another  reactionist  plot  has  been  discovered,  to  which 
the  King  was  evidently  privy,  and  his  uncle  the  Count 
Trapani  the  chief  concocter.  This  last-named  worthy 
wrote  to  me  only  two  days  ago  to  ask  me  to  take  all 
his  property  under  the  protection  of  Her  Majesty's 
Legation,  to  which  I  at  once  wrote  an  answer  civilly 
declining  to  do  so;  and  at  the  very  moment  when  he 
was  asking  this  he  was  cooking  a  plot  of  which  the 
first  act  was  to  have  been  the  arrest  of  the  Ministers. 
If  I  happen  to  be  thrown  in  his  way,  I  shall  be  much 
tempted  to  "  give  him  a  bit  of  my  mind  '  for  his 
impudence  in  coming  to  me  under  such  circum- 
stances. 

You  will  perhaps  recollect  that  in  the  Aquila  plot  a 
secretary  of  the  French  Legation  was  deeply  mixed,  as 
well  as  another  Frenchman  of  the  name  of  d'Ajous. 
In  this  one  the  chief  organ  is  also  a  Frenchman, 
who  gives   himself   out   as  the   secretary   of   Count 

Trapani,  and  next  to  him  comes  a  certain  Prince  C , 

a  Neapolitan  of  the  worst  possible  character,  well 
known  as  devoted  to  France,  a  former  Court  spy  and 
convicted  cheater  at  cards,  who  is  looked  upon  shyly 
by  everyone  here,  but  who  was  invited  down  to 
Castellamare  to  dine  with  Brenier  last  Sunday,  when 
the  plot  was  nearly  ripe. 

Papers  have  been  found  in  the  Frenchman's  rooms 
which  are  said  to  give  a  good  clue  to  what  was  in- 
tended, and  implicate  the  Pope,  Antonelli,*  Lamori- 

*  Giacomo  Antonelli,  Cardinal,  b.  1806.     Was  President  and 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  during  the  Liberal  administration 
of  the  Vatican  which  promulgated  the  Statuto  or  Constitution  so 
soon  disregarded.     Accompanied  the  Pope  in  his  flight  to  Gaeta, 


60  NAPLES  [i860 

ciere  *  and  others.  The  consequence  has  been  that  the 
Ministers  have  resigned  and  only  hold  office  till  their 
successors  are  named.  If  reactionist  names  are 
selected  it  may  push  the  Neapolitans  to  extremities, 
but  they  feel  marvellously  strongly  the  wisdom  of  not 
risking  life  or  limb  in  their  own  affairs  and  of  allowing 
Garibaldi  and  his  people  to  have  all  the  honour  and 
all  the  knocks.  The  figure  this  people  is  making  is 
something  too  deplorable.  The  republicans  alone  are 
active  and  stirring,  but  the  annexationists  are  all  at 
sixes  and  sevens,  quarrelling  already  about  the  loaves 
and  fishes  which  they  don't  deserve  to  have  any 
share  of. 

The  party  which  considers  itself  immensely  superior 
to  all  others  flatters  itself  that  it  can  wait  till  Garibaldi 
has  driven  away  the  King,  and  that  when  he  arrives 
at  the  gates  of  Naples  they  will  be  able  to  say  that 
they  are  much  obliged  for  what  he  has  done,  but  that 
henceforth  they  will  manage  their  own  affairs;  and 
they  take  it  for  granted  that,  after  eating  an  ice,  he 
will  move  on  and  leave  them  to  themselves. 

One  of  the  chief  clubs  by  which  all  these  matters 
are  arranged,  and  where  they  are  discussed,  is  the 
"  National  Committee,"  which  adopted  as  their  seal 
what  they  considered  the  appropriate  national  arms — 
i.e.,  three  fraternal  hands  grasping  a  dagger.  These 
blackguards  feel  no  sort  of  shame  in  proclaiming  that 

and  returned  to  Rome  as  an  ardent  reactionary.  Remained  the 
most  important  personage  at  the  Papal  Court,  and  died  in  1876, 
bequeathing  a  property  of  £1,600,000  to  his  three  brothers. 

*  Christophe  Leon  Juchault  de  Lamoriciere,  b.  1806.  Distin- 
guished himself  in  command  of  French  troops  in  the  Algerian 
war  of  1847.  Ordered  the  attack  on  the  barricades  in  Paris  in 
1848  and  quelled  the  rioting;  arrested  on  the  occasion  of  the 
Coup  d'Etat  in  1852,  and  banished  from  France.  Commanded  the 
troops  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  when  the  Italians  threatened  the  States 
of  the  Church,  was  defeated  at  Castelfidardo  by  the  Sardinian 
General  Cialdini;  surrendered  at  Ancona,  September  10,  1860. 
Retired  into  private  life  and  died  in  1865. 


WANT  OF  HONOUR  61 

to  be  the  national  weapon,  but  the  want  of  all  feeling 
of  honour  prevailing  from  highest  to  lowest  is  of  bad 
augury  for  the  success  of  the  future  free  government 
of  the  country. 

I  can  give  you  a  splendid  instance  of  this  in  the 
conduct  of  my  own  landlord,  a  certain  General 
of  high  rank,  one  of  the  most  hated  members  of 
the  old  Camarilla,  who  has  passed  his  life  in  the 
King's  ante-chamber,  and  has  feathered  his  nest 
handsomely  through  the  favour  of  the  Court.  This 
worthy  had  to  give  up  his  places,  and  retired  in  a 
very  creditable  manner  to  Switzerland ;  but  in  a  very 
short  time  it  began  to  be  rumoured  that  he  was  on 
board  one  of  the  Sardinian  ships,  and  now  he  coolly 
publishes  an  address  to  the  army,  of  which  he  is  still 
a  retired  General,  calling  upon  it  to  give  its  adhesion 
to  Victor  Emmanuel. 

The  Count  of  Syracuse  goes  to-night  to  Turin  in  a 
Sardinian  ship  upon  the  invitation  of  the  King. 

I  found  Villamarina  to-day  in  better  spirits  at  the 
way  things  were  going,  and  he  told  me  in  confidence 
that  he  was  much  pleased  to  know  that  all  misunder- 
standing between  Garibaldi  and  Cavour  was  at  an  end, 
and  that  he  is  to  receive  the  Dictator  well  when  he 
comes.  He  said  that  he  had  been  writing  to  urge 
Cavour  to  make  up  their  differences,  representing  that 
it  would  be  most  mischievous  to  be  at  variance,  after 
having  supported  Garibaldi  by  every  means  in  his 
power." 

It  is  quite  time  that  there  should  be  some  real 
understanding,  and  I  have  to-day  sent  a  memorandum 
in  a  confidential  despatch,  saying  why  I  believe  it 
would  be  advantageous  that  Sardinian  authorities 
should  be  installed  at  Naples  as  soon  as  possible  after 
the  King's  departure. 

It  is,  as  you  say,  sad  to  reflect  that  I  should  have 
to  fall  with  the  dynasty  which  has  so  richly  deserved 
its  fate,  which,  I  maintain,  I  have  not.     The  prospect 


62  NAPLES  [i860 

is  not  cheery,  for  I  am  not  eligible  for  any  pension 
whatever,  and  not  having,  like  Cincinnatus,  even  a 
plough  to  retire  to,  I  must  remain  in  the  unenviable 
position  of  a  servant  out  of  place,  and  it  is  very  likely 
I  may  have  to  wait  long  for  another. 

There  is  no  particular  news  from  the  seat  of  war 
except  that  the  country  is  ready  to  receive  the 
Liberator  with  open  arms  whenever  he  appears,  and 
the  King's  troops  waiting  to  give  him  battle  at 
Salerno  are  said  to  be  ready  to  lay  down  their  arms. 
Brenier's  demand  for  satisfaction  is  still  immensely 
commented  upon,  and  gives  no  small  disgust. 


CHAPTER  III 

NAPLES,  SEPTEMBER  1860 

[This  chapter  deals  almost  entirely  with  the  internal  con- 
dition of  the  town  of  Naples  after  the  entry  of  Garibaldi,  and 
with  the  uncertainty  which  still  prevailed  in  regard  to  the 
action  of  Sardinia ;  an  uncertainty  which  did  not  endure  long, 
an  advance  of  the  Piedmontese  troops  having  become  a 
necessity  if  King  Francis's  return  to  his  capital  was  to  be  pre- 
vented, the  forces  of  the  "  Garibaldini,"  in  spite  of  the  victory 
gained  by  them  at  the  battle  of  the  Volturno,  being  quite 
inadequate  to  accomplish  the  reduction  of  the  fortified  towns 
of  Capua  and  Gaeta.  The  arrival  of  King  Victor  Emmanuel's 
army  sealed  the  fate  of  the  Bourbon  dynasty.] 

September  5. — If  I  write  every  day  it  accumulates 
to  such  a  mass,  and  if  I  put  it  off  for  a  few  days  I  am 
astonished  to  find  how  much  has  passed  that  I  should 
have  liked  to  mention;  and  when  events  are  particu- 
larly stirring  it  is  almost  impossible  not  to  begin  by 
speaking  of  the  last  thing  that  has  been  producing  a 
great  impression  on  one. 

That  last  event  now  is  that  the  King,  having  con- 
fided the  care  of  Naples  to  the  municipality  and  the 
National  Guard,  announces  his  own  intention  of 
retiring  to  Gaeta.  This  resolution  must  be  an  im- 
mense relief  to  everyone  in  Naples,  for  it  gives  every 
prospect  of  a  quiet  transition,  which  is  the  one  thing 
that  people  have  latterly  been  anxious  about. 

As  I  have  not  yet  heard  of  the  King  being  actually 
gone,  it  would  be  rash  to  speak  of  it  as  a  fact;  but  in 
truth  he  seems  to  have  nothing  else  to  do,  for  the 
ground  is  gradually  giving  way  under  his  feet,  and 
every  day  brings  fresh  accounts  of  defection  in  the 

63 


64  NAPLES  [i860 

army  and  navy.  The  latter  especially  has  behaved  in 
a  manner  so  disgraceful  that  I  don't  think  it  could 
have  been  equalled  in  any  other  country,  and  its  last 
performance  was  to  refuse  to  go  to  sea  when  ordered 
to  cruise  in  the  direction  of  Salerno.  They  then 
announced  that  they  had  no  objection  to  go  towards 
Gaeta,  but  that  they  would  not  go  anywhere  where 
they  might  be  called  upon  to  fight ! 

It  shows  what  a  Government  gains  by  destroying 
every  feeling  of  honour  and  self-respect  in  a  whole 
nation,  but  it  is  impossible  to  describe  the  loathsome 
exhibition  that  has  been  made,  during  all  these  late 
times  of  excitement,  of  meanness,  cowardice,  in- 
gratitude, and  every  other  low  quality.  The  men 
that  lived  at  Court,  and  fattened  upon  the  Court,  have 
been  among  the  first  to  rat,  or  at  least  to  run  away, 
leaving  their  "  poor  young  King,"  as  they  always 
called  him,  to  shift  for  himself,  after  having  themselves 
done  all  that  was  possible  to  get  him  into  his  present 
mess  by  encouraging  him  to  resist  all  change  in  the 
system  under  which  they  alone  prospered. 

And  the  Liberals  have  not  shown  to  any  better 
advantage,  the  only  appearance  of  vigour  they  have 
exhibited  being  a  determination  to  illuminate  the 
town  in  honour  of  the  King's  departure,  which  they 
will  no  doubt  boast  of  as  a  vast  act  of  courage. 

I  wish  to  goodness  we  could  get  rid  of  the  regiment 
that  takes  care  of  us  at  Castellamare,  but  as  long  as 
we  keep  them  I  shall  not  feel  certain  that  some 
troubles  may  not  take  place  there,  as  they  are  the 
people  who  had  to  capitulate  at  Reggio,  and  feel 
extremely  sore  against  the  National  Guard,  who  took 
part  against  them,  and  they  are  quite  numerous 
enough  to  eat  up  bodily  our  poor  little  National  Guard 
here,  who  have  in  all  no  more  than  a  hundred 
miserable  flint  muskets  to  defend  the  place  with. 
They  have  been  trying  hard  to  get  the  arms  to  which 
they  are  entitled,  and  last  week  a  formal  order  for 


OFFICERS'  TREACHERY  65 

them  was  given  by  the  Minister  of  War,  but  the  officer 
in  command  at  the  arsenal  refused  to  obey,  as  he  had 
private  orders  from  the  King  not  to  issue  any  arms 
to  the  National  Guard.  This  is  the  way  he  tries  to  be 
a  true  constitutional  Sovereign ;  but  in  common 
justice  one  must  admit  that  His  Majesty  was  un- 
doubtedly right  if  he  believed  that  every  musket 
issued  to  the  National  Guard  would  be  used  against 
himself  if  there  was  to  be  a  fight  between  him  and 
Garibaldi. 

The  news  from  Sicily  is  not  good,  and  at  Messina 
there  have  been  murders  and  banishments  under 
threat  of  the  dagger  in  case  of  hesitation. 

The  Government  had  published  in  the  official  paper 
that  they  merely  held  office  till  their  successors  were 
found,  but  they  will  now,  I  imagine,  hold  on  till  they 
can  resign  their  functions  into  the  hands  of  the 
Dictator,  though  I  should  not  be  surprised  if  one  of 
them,  Liborio  Romano,  the  Minister  of  the  Interior, 
who,  I  am  convinced,  has  been  playing  the  annexa- 
tionist game  throughout,  should  not  resign  even  then. 
(This  proved  correct;  he  had  been  a  traitor  all  the 
time  and  in  communication  with  Cavour  and  Garibaldi, 
under  whom  he  remained  Minister.) 

September  6. — This  morning  I  met  in  the  railway 
in  plain  clothes  an  artillery  officer  whom  I  had  seen 
sometimes  last  year  at  the  Princess  Filangieri's,  and 
who  had  arrived  only  two  days  ago  from  the  citadel  of 
Messina.  He  says  there  are  about  4,500  Neapolitan 
troops  in  the  citadel,  but  that  they  are  an  atrocious 
set;  that  they  would  not  even  obey  the  King  if  he 
were  to  order  them  to  evacuate  without  fighting,  and 
that  they  threatened  to  kill  their  officers,  who,  they 
declared,  were  betraying  them.  Not  far  wrong  either, 
thought  I  to  myself,  feeling  quite  refreshed  at  hearing 
that  there  was  a  set  of  men  disposed  to  show  spirit  and 
courage.  About  half  an  hour  after  abusing  the 
villains  for  daring  to  express  doubts  of  the  integrity 


66  NAPLES  [i860 

of  their  officers,  my  friend  became  confidential  and 
informed  me  that  he  was  one  of  a  number  of  young 
men  who  are  trying  to  raise  a  corps  d 'elite  of  volunteers 
(against  the  King,  of  course,  whose  uniform  he  was 
wearing  three  days  before).  Their  chief  difficulty,  he 
said,  was  about  arms,  which  they  were  ready  to  buy 
if  they  knew  where,  and  asked  if  our  ships  of  war  would 
not  sell  them  a  number  of  revolvers,  etc.  When  I  said 
certainly  not,  he  would  not  for  a  long  time  believe 
that  I  was  serious,  saying  that  the  Sardinian  ships  of 
war  had  let  them  have  a  hundred  muskets,  but  they 
were  not  good,  and  more  were  wanted. 

I  cannot  tell  you  the  extent  to  which  it  revolts  me 
to  have  to  talk  civilly  to  animals  of  this  description, 
and  it  is  forced  upon  me  much  oftener  than  is 
agreeable. 

I  asked  Brenier  yesterday  what  was  the  reason  that 
the  Emperor  had  hesitated  to  receive  the  Due  de 
Cajanello,  who  had  been  sent  to  him  with  the  excuses 
about  the  broken  head. 

He  told  me  that  the  reason  of  the  hesitation  was  that 
De  Martino,  very  much  contrary  to  his — the  B.'s — 
advice,  had  chosen  that  the  King,  instead  of  confining 
the  mission  to  its  ostensible  object,  should  write  a 
letter  to  the  Emperor  again  invoking  His  Imperial 
Majesty's  support,  and  the  Emperor  was  not  anxious 
that  such  an  appeal  should  be  made  to  him.  I  spoke 
to  De  Martino  about  this  to-day,  and  said  that  Brenier 
spoke  of  the  ill-advised  letter  having  been  written 
quite  against  his  persuasion,  which  made  the  little 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  nearly  jump  out  of 
his  chair,  declaring  that  Brenier  for  a  week  before 
had  been  urging  a  fresh  appeal  to  France  and 
England,  which  last  was  always  added  for  form's 
sake. 

De  Martino  upon  this  likewise  told  me  that  one  of 
his  own  chief  reasons  for  resigning  was  the  discovery 
that  Brenier  had  induced  Prince  Ischetella  and  Prince 


GALLENGA'S  LETTEK  67 

Cutrofiano  to  get  the  King  to  telegraph  an  appeal  for 
support  to  the  Emperor,  of  which  he,  the  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  had  been  kept  in  entire  ignorance. 

One  has  to  choose  between  the  two  stories  the  best 
way  one  can. 

I  got  rather  a  curious  letter  to-day  from  Mr. 
Gallenga,  who  calls  himself  "  one  of  Garibaldi's  staff," 
and  is,  I  believe,  the  '  chef  d'etat-major,"  dated 
Salerno  this  morning,  where  he  says  the  General  will 
be  in  a  few  hours ;  that  he  has  ordered  landings  to  be 
made  in  the  Gulf  of  Salerno  and  in  the  Bay  of  Naples, 
and  in  the  name  of  humanity  he  calls  upon  me  to 
do  what  I  can  to  prevent  the  Government  from 
resorting  to  a  bombardment  if  the  forts  should  be 
attacked. 

This  letter  was  brought  to  me  by  one  of  the  active 
men  of  the  Comitato  of  the  Dagger.  I  told  him  that 
I  could  not  answer  Gallenga's  letter  and  commence  a 
correspondence  with  Garibaldi's  staff,  but  that  he 
might  say  that  we  had  received  assurances  from  the 
Government  that  there  would  under  no  circumstances 
be  a  bombardment,  though  the  forts  would  of  course 
fire  upon  any  assailants;  and  I  also  told  him  that  they 
must  not  reckon  upon  our  ships  remaining  in  their 
present  positions  if  it  was  intended  to  make  the  attack 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  get  them  as  shields  from  the 
fire  of  the  forts ;  that  we  should  do  nothing  to  oppose 
the  attacking  party,  but  that  we  should  not  remain 
to  cover  the  landing  and  paralyse  the  fire  of  the 
defenders. 

In  that  case,  said  he,  the  plan  must  be  abandoned: 
so  it  appears  that  they  intended  to  slip  in  among  the 
numerous  foreign  men-of-war,  which  are  now  lying 
so  close  together  that  the  Neapolitans  could  not  fire 
upon  any  invaders  without  hitting  the  ships. 

I  had  some  unsatisfactory  talk  afterwards  with  this 
man,  who  was  loud  in  his  complaints  of  the  Moderate 
or    Cavour    Committee,    who    wish    for    immediate 


68  NAPLES  [i860 

annexation.  He  says  that  his  own  party  will  not  con- 
sent to  be  annexed  to  form  a  province  of  Sardinia, 
and  that  the  annexation  cannot  take  place  till 
Garibaldi  can  offer  the  whole  of  Italy  to  Victor 
Emmanuel,  with  Rome  as  the  capital  of  the  king- 
dom, and  this,  he  said,  he  knew  to  be  Garibaldi's 
intention. 

I  suggested  that  an  attack  on  the  city  of  Rome 
entailed  a  collision  with  France,  upon  which  my 
gentleman  contradicted  me,  and  swore  that  he  was 
in  correspondence  with  Mocquard,  the  Emperor's 
secretary,  and  that  he  had  the  assurance  that  all  His 
Imperial  Majesty  required  was  that  the  Holy  Father 
should  not  be  driven  out  of  the  Vatican  and  St.  Angelo. 
Of  course  I  don't  believe  all  this,  but  it  at  least  shows 
to  what  extremities  they  mean  to  push  things,  and 
Garibaldi  unquestionably  leans  much  more  to  these 
men  than  to  the  moderates. 

September  9. — On  the  evening  of  the  6th  the  King 
confided  the  care  of  his  capital  to  the  municipality  and 
the  National  Guard,  issued  a  very  creditable  farewell 
address  and  protest,  and,  embarking  on  board  of  one 
of  his  smallest  steamers,  sailed  for  Gaeta,  accompanied 
by  two  Spanish  ships,  with  the  Spanish  Minister  on 
board,  serving  as  an  escort. 

The  navy  behaved  disgracefully  to  the  end,  having 
refused  to  accompany  him  even  to  Gaeta. 

With  the  exception  of  about  2,000  men,  the  whole  of 
the  troops  were  also  sent  out  of  town,  so  that  it  became 
pretty  evident  that  no  great  troubles  were  to  be 
feared,  though,  even  then,  I  doubt  whether  anyone 
expected  the  holiday  entry  which  the  Dictator  made 
the  next  morning,  and  which  really  was  worthy  of  the 
rest  of  his  marvellous  progress,  from  Marsala  to  the 
present  time. 

It  is,  however,  literally  true  that,  within  fifteen 
hours  after  the  King  had  left  his  capital,  where  a  few 
days  ago  he  had  nearly  20,000  men,  Garibaldi  arrived 


GARIBALDI'S  ARRIVAL  69 

by  railroad,  accompanied  by  about  a  third  of  his  staff, 
two  or  three  newspaper  correspondents,  and  four  or 
five  sympathisers  who  had  hooked  on  to  him — in  all, 
from  fifteen  to  twenty  persons — his  extreme  advanced 
guard  not  having  arrived  within  thirty  miles  of 
Salerno. 

It  was  by  the  greatest  piece  of  good  fortune  that  I 
did  not  absolutely  arrive  in  the  same  train  with  him, 
and  accompany  him  from  the  station.  The  train  from 
Castellamare  joins  in  with  the  one  from  Salerno  at 
Torre  dell'  Annunziata,  and  as  I  had  some  suspicions 
that  some  of  the  foremost  Garibaldians  might  be 
coming  up,  or  that  the  train  might  be  taken  up  for 
them,  I  had  asked  Admiral  Mundy  to  send  over  the 
Intrepid  gunboat  to  secure  my  getting  into  town,  and 
I  carried  Brenier  over  with  me. 

If  it  had  not  been  for  this  precaution  we  should 
absolutely  have  come  by  the  same  train,  and,  though 
I  should  have  liked  extremely  to  have  seen  him  arriving 
and  received  by  the  town,  I  should  have  been  ex- 
cessively put  out  by  knowing  that  all  Naples  would 
be  saying  that,  within  a  few  hours  of  the  King's 
departure,  I  had  gone  out  to  meet  and  to  welcome  the 
Dictator  upon  his  arrival.  As  it  was,  Brenier 's 
carriage  had  gone  to  the  station  to  meet  its  master, 
and  the  world  persists  in  saying  that  it  came  back  full 
of  the  red-shirted  followers. 

Of  course  his  reception  was  enthusiastic,  and  the 
Neapolitans  had  an  opportunity  of  showing  what 
a  base  calumny  it  had  been  to  accuse  them  of  want  of 
courage;  for  as  soon  as  it  was  quite  certain  that  the 
soldiers  were  irrevocably  gone,  and  that  there  was 
not  a  chance  of  their  having  an  enemy  in  their 
neighbourhood,  arms  were  dragged  out  from  every 
hole  and  corner  and  paraded  and  brandished  in 
the  most  heroic  manner;  red  shirts  were  mounted, 
as  spotless  and  bright  as  the  first  day  of  a  hunting 
coat,  their  owners  proudly  feeling  that  their  posses- 


70  NAPLES  [i860 

sion  entitled  them  to  all  the  glories  of  Sicily  and 
Calabria. 

However,  while  the  town  was  running  mad  with 
flags,  daggers,  and  red  shirts,  the  thinking  portion 
of  the  public  was  in  the  most  gloomy  and  despairing 
humour,  for  it  was  understood  that  Garibaldi  had 
thrown  himself  entirely  into  the  hands  of  the  extreme 
party,  and  that  he  would  not  hear  of  annexation  till 
both  the  Roman  States  and  Venetia  had  been 
conquered. 

Villamarina  had  been  desired  to  enter  at  once  into 
good  relations  with  him,  and  had  gone  round  in  a 
steamer  to  Salerno  to  meet  him,  but  just  arrived  too 
late;  and  on  his  return  to  Naples,  rinding  the  party 
which  he  had  joined,  declared  that  he  would  not 
go  to  him.  The  Sardinian  Admiral,  Persano,  who 
throughout  has  been  helping  him  as  much  as  it  was 
possible  to  do  without  taking  an  actual  part  in  the 
hostilities,  was  in  no  less  despair,  for  he  received  letters 
from  Garibaldi  himself,  saying  that,  after  remaining 
a  few  days  in  Naples,  he  intended  to  march  to  Rome 
and  then  to  attack  Venetia,  and  when  all  Italy  was 
conquered  he  would  make  it  over  to  King  Victor 
Emmanuel. 

Yesterday  things  looked  a  shade  better,  for  the 
Dictator  had  formed  his  administration  entirely  of 
men  belonging  to  the  moderate  party,  and  he  had 
likewise  made  over  the  fleet  to  Admiral  Persano,  to  be 
added  to  the  navy  of  the  King  of  Sardinia,  and  the 
royal  Sardinian  flag  has  been  hoisted  in  the  ships — 
a  proceeding  which,  I  think,  must  force  the  Sardinian 
Government  at  once  to  take  an  open  part;  but  they 
have  preferred  the  underhand  dealings  so  long  that  it 
will  now  be  extremely  difficult  for  them  to  follow  any 
satisfactory  course. 

I  had  a  long  talk  with  Gallenga,  which  did  not  help 
me  to  make  me  see  things  in  a  more  cheerful  light :  he 
is  on  Garibaldi's  staff,  and  is  correspondent  of  The 


GARIBALDI'S  INTENTIONS  71 

Times.  He  was  the  F.O.  examiner  who  passed 
frrench  for  Italian  on  his  examination;  and  Arri- 
vabene,  the  correspondent  of  the  Daily  News, 
also  with  Garibaldi,  passed  Conyngham  in  the  same 
way,  so  that  the  Legation  feels  at  home  with  the 
staff. 

However,  Gallenga  told  me  that  Garibaldi  speaks 
like  a  madman,  and  declares  that  he  will  march  from 
hence  to  Rome — not  meaning  the  Roman  States,  but 
the  town  itself — and  that,  as  for  the  French,  he  is  not 
afraid  of  them,  for  that  there  is  in  France  so  strong 
a  party  in  favour  of  him  that  the  Emperor  dare  nob 
oppose  him.  When  he  has  conquered  Rome  he  will 
attack  Venetia,  and,  when  that  likewise  is  mastered, 
the  crown  of  the  United  Italian  kingdom  will,  from 
Rome  as  its  capital,  be  offered  to  Victor  Emmanuel. 

It  is,  in  fact,  an  exact  repetition  of  what  I  told 
you  he  said  in  his  letters  to  Persano;  but  it  is  still 
not  unlikely  that  the  language  may  be  used  as  a 
blind,  and  that  his  real  intentions  may  be  to  attack 
Lamoriciere,  but  not  Rome. 

I  also  saw  a  Commander  Forbes,  who  has  attached 
himself  to  the  Dictator ;  but  I  really  have  not  time  to 
write  down  what  he  said  in  detail,  though  the  upshot 
of  it  all  was  that,  in  point  of  fact,  the  whole  of  the 
southern  part  of  the  kingdom,  from  Reggio  to  Naples, 
has  been  conquered  by  Garibaldi  single-handed  and 
without  an  army  at  all,  for  he  seems  all  along  to  have 
been  from  thirty  to  sixty  miles  in  advance  of  it,  the 
people  rising  and  the  troops  falling  back  or  capitulating 
as  he  advanced. 

At  Salerno  the  Government  had  a  very  strong  force 
last  week,  but  at  last  Garibaldi  entered  it  at  least  sixty 
miles  in  advance  of  the  foremost  of  his  troops. 

The  bewilderment  and  disorganisation  of  the 
royalists  was  very  much  helped  by  a  most  amusing 
trick  of  Peard,  Garibaldi's  Englishman  as  he  is  called, 
who  went  into  the  telegraph  stations  and  dictated 


72  NAPLES  [i860 

despatches  to  the  Minister  of  War  at  Naples,  as  though 
they  were  sent  by  their  own  Generals,  and  these,  as 
you  may  imagine,  were  calculated  to  create  no  small 
confusion. 

Three  of  the  late  M misters  continue  to  hold  their 
places  under  the  Dictator,  the  only  important  one  of 
them  being  Komano,  the  Minister  of  the  Interior,  who 
has  manifestly  been  false  throughout.  Of  the  others, 
the  President,  Spinelli,  has  gone  abroad,  and  De 
Martino  remains  quietly  here. 

To  these  men  we  have  reason  to  be  grateful,  for  they 
had  a  double  task,  in  the  first  part  of  which  they  failed, 
and  succeeded  in  the  latter.  They  had  to  try  to  save 
the  dynasty  under  a  Constitution,  and  this,  I  believe, 
they  honestly  endeavoured  to  do ;  but  they  had  also 
the  duty  of  trying  to  prevent  the  transition  from 
being  attended  by  disorder  and  excesses  in  the  event 
of  its  being  impossible  to  hold  the  King  up. 

September  11. — As  you  are  taking  your  holiday  you 
may  perhaps  not  know  that  1  had  instructions  to  see 
Garibaldi  if  he  came  here,  and  to  tell  him  that,  though 
I  could  not  hold  official  intercourse  with  him,  I  should 
remain  at  Naples  till  further  orders;  and  that  I  was 
also  to  tell  him  from  Lord  John  that  any  attack  upon 
Venetia  would  be  attended  with  calamity  to  Italy. 
The  first  question  was  as  to  how  I  was  to  see  the  great 
man  without  exciting  all  the  remarks  that  would  have 
been  made  if  I  had  gone  to  call  upon  him;  so  it  was 
settled  that  we  should  meet  on  board  the  Hannibal 
when  he  went  to  call  on  Admiral  Mundy,  and  our 
interview  came  off  yesterday  morning. 

When  I  went  on  board  he  was  already  in  the 
Admiral's  cabin,  with  Bertani  and  another  officer  of 
his  staff  and  most  of  the  captains  of  our  ships,  includ- 
ing the  Commodore,  and  we  began  by  exchanging 
civilities,  amongst  which  I  believe  I  must  plead  guilty 
to  having  expressed  my  own  admiration  of  the  extra- 
ordinary results  he  had  obtained  with  such  small 


INTERVIEW  WITH  GARIBALDI  73 

means;  and  then  the  "  assistants,"  as  the  French 
papers  call  them,  were  asked  to  retire,  and  the  Admiral, 
Garibaldi,  and  myself  remained  to  have  our  talk  alone, 
when  I  duly  delivered  my  message  as  I  was  ordered. 

He  at  once  said  that  he  would  make  no  mystery 
about  his  plans  and  intentions,  but  would  tell  me  that 
he  meant  immediately  to  push  on  to  Rome,  and  when 
there  to  offer  the  kingdom  of  Italy  to  King  Victor 
Emmanuel,  whose  business  it  would  be  to  proceed  to 
the  liberation  of  Venice,  from  which  task  he  would 
not  be  able  to  shrink  without  forfeiting  his  whole 
position  and  popularity.  If  Austria  would  consent 
to  give  it  up  by  purchase  or  negotiation,  so  much  the 
better;  but,  if  not,  it  must  be  wrested  from  her  by  the 
sword ;  and  he  was  sure  that,  in  advishig  that  no  attack 
should  be  made  on  Venice,  Lord  John  did  not  fairly 
represent  the  generous  sympathies  of  the  British 
nation,  which  he  knew  to  be  with  him.  He  recognised 
how  much  Italy  owed  to  the  English  Government,  but 
he  declared  that  both  Lord  John  and  Lord  Palmerston 
were  too  old  to  enter  into  the  warmth  of  feeling  that 
runs  through  the  country. 

I  said  that  I  was  quite  ready  to  admit  that  the  whole 
of  England  was  with  him  at  heart,  but  that  nevertheless 
we  were  a  practical  nation,  and,  if  he  was  believed 
to  be  pushing  things  to  such  an  extremity  as  to  make 
it  probable  that  they  would  end  by  a  European  war, 
he  might  be  sure  that  he  would  very  soon  forfeit  the 
sympathies  and  good  wishes  of  the  English. 

He  would  not  admit  that  an  attack  on  Venice  was 
the  least  likely  to  result  in  a  war,  and  he  hinted  that 
Austria  was  so  rotten  at  heart  that  very  little  was 
required  to  make  her  fall  to  pieces,  and  that  he  knew, 
through  his  Hungarian  adherents,  that  Hungary  was 
on  the  verge  of  revolution. 

We  then  talked  of  Rome  and  the  French  garrison, 
and  he  is  as  fully  prepared  as  Cobden  could  have  been 
to  "  crumple  up  "  Napoleon  and  his  whole  army.    He 


74  NAPLES  [i860 

asked  what  right  the  Emperor  had  to  keep  him  out  of 
Eome,  which  is  an  Italian  town,  saying,  "  I'm  not 
afraid,  I  assure  you,  of  this  M.  Napoleon:  it  is  because 
Cavour  was  afraid  of  him  that  he  allowed  Sardinia  to 
be  dragged  through  the  mud,  and  consented  to  the 
cession  of  Savoy  and  Nice,  which  I  never  should  have 
allowed,  for  I  should  have  made  Napoleon  afraid 
of  me." 

He  spoke  as  if  he  really  thought  the  expulsion  of  the 
French  from  Rome  a  matter  of  no  great  difficulty,  and 
said  he  had  so  many  adherents  in  France  that  the 
Emperor  would  scarcely  dare  to  go  against  him; 
adding  that,  when  a  robber  is  in  your  house  you  do  him 
honour  enough  if  you  ask  him  to  go  out,  but,  if  he  does 
not  choose  to  do  so,  he  cannot  complain  of  being 
turned  out  by  force. 

There  is  no  use  in  telling  you  what  I  said  in  answer 
to  all  this,  which  from  anyone  else  might  be  taken 
simply  as  rodomontade,  but  one  has  certainly  no  right 
to  apply  such  a  word  to  Garibaldi.  The  real  truth  is 
that  he  is  an  enthusiast,  pursuing  his  Italian  unity  to 
its  utmost  extent,  and  determined  to  risk  all  that  has 
been  won  rather  than  stop  one  step  short  of  the  accom- 
plishment of  the  whole. 

I  put  him  in  mind  that  in  1848,  when  Sardinia  did 
not  choose  to  listen  to  reason,  she  not  only  lost  in  a  few 
weeks  the  whole  of  Lombardy,  which  she  had  already 
secured,  but  fixed  the  Austrian  yoke  more  firmly  than 
ever  on  the  whole  of  Italy.  If  he  neglects  to  secure, 
as  he  goes  along,  what  he  has  conquered,  the  same  thing 
may  very  possibly  happen  again  here,  if  he  should 
break  down  before  Lamoriciere  or  the  French  garrison. 

The  last  few  weeks  have  given  me  a  lower  opinion 
than  ever  of  the  Neapolitan  people;  and  if  the  army 
of  Garibaldi  was  dispersed  I  fully  believe  that,  with  a 
single  regiment,  the  King  might  march  back,  take 
possession  of  the  capital,  and  rule  as  he  did  before,  in 
spite  of  the  arming  of  the  National  Guard  and  the 


NEAPOLITAN  NAVY  HANDED  OVER     75 

exhibitions  of  martial  valour  which  we  have  lately  had 
in  the  streets. 

In  the  event,  however,  of  a  possible  attempt  at  a 
return  by  the  King  if  Garibaldi  should  meet  with  a 
reverse,  Sardinia  would,  I  think,  be  forced  to  step  in 
to  prevent  such  a  calamity,  for  she  is  now  so  far  com- 
mitted that  it  would  be  next  to  impossible  for  her  to 
avoid  it. 

The  Neapolitan  navy  has  been  quietly  made  over  to 
the  King  of  Sardinia,  though  the  two  countries  have 
never  been  at  war,  and  the  Sardinian  Bersaglieri  have 
been  landed  from  the  ships  and  are  doing  duty  at 
Naples,  and  their  force  is  going  to  be  greatly  increased. 

The  ships  will  hardly  be  returned  under  any  circum- 
stances, and,  if  Garibaldi  should  chance  to  be  beaten, 
the  presence  of  the  Sardinian  troops  will,  I  hope,  entail 
the  certainty  that  their  Government  would  insist  on 
the  will  of  the  nation  deciding  whether  the  King  should 
come  back  or  not. 

Villamarina  was  in  black  despair  ten  days  ago,  for 
Garibaldi  was  supposed  to  have  thrown  himself  entirely 
into  the  hands  of  the  republicans,  but  he  is  now  more 
hopeful,  as  all  the  nominations  have  been  of  moderate 
men,  and  the  expressions  of  love  and  admiration  of 
Victor  Emmanuel  on  the  part  of  the  Dictator  are 
unbounded;  but  the  fact  of  the  extreme  influence  of 
Bertani  over  him  can  still  not  be  disputed,  and,  when 
the  fighting  is  over,  there  will  be  a  great  push  made  in 
the  republican  interests. 

In  consequence  of  Villamarina's  entreaties  he  con- 
sents not  to  attack  Rome  till  the  Sardinian  Govern- 
ment have  had  time  to  try  to  obtain  by  negotiation  the 
withdrawal  of  the  French  garrison ;  but  I  cannot  con- 
ceive that  this  can  be  seriously  expected  by  them, 
though  the  persons  on  Garibaldi's  staff  look  upon  the 
French  simply  as  the  Pope's  bodyguard,  and  think  that 
His  Holiness  will  withdraw  at  once  from  Rome  and 
carry  them  with  him. 


76  NAPLES  [i860 

I  could  not  even  find  from  Villamarina  what  was 
intended  by  this  negotiation,  but  Hudson*  writes 
that  the  Sardinian  Government  were  determined  to 
stop  Garibaldi  coiite  que  codte,  so  I  suppose  there 
is  some  manoeuvre  on  foot  between  them  and  the 
Emperor. 

If  Rome  is  attacked,  I  don't  see  how  it  will'  be 
possible  to  escape  from  French  intervention  in 
Italy. 

In  a  proclamation  to  the  Palermitans,  published  in 
the  official  paper  last  night,  Garibaldi  tells  them  that  it 
is  from  the  steps  of  the  Quirinal  that  he  will  pronounce 
the  annexation  of  Sicily;  and,  after  a  menace  of  this 
nature,  I  doubt  whether  any  country  would  be  justified 
in  complaining  if  the  Emperor  were  at  once  to  send 
20,000  more  troops  to  Civita  Vecchia. 

September  16. — I  had  no  opportunity  of  sending 
letters  last  week,  and  the  consequence  has  been  that 
I  have  allowed  many  days  to  pass  without  writing, 
but  I  don't  recollect  that  there  are  great  arrears  to 
work  up. 

The  Neapolitans  are  in  a  shocking  fright  at  the 
Dictator's  intention  of  going  to  Rome,  and  the  address 
to  the  Palermitans  produced  a  fall  in  the  Funds  of 
about  9  per  cent,  at  one  jump,  and  it  has  been  since 
increasing. 

Villamarina  and  others  have  been  pressing  me  to 
use  all  my  efforts  to  persuade  Garibaldi  to  be  moderate; 
and,  as  diplomatists  are  to  him  a  suspected  race,  they 
wished  me  to  get  Admiral  Mundy  and  all  the  British 
travellers  in  Naples  to  preach  moderation  to  him. 

It  is  curious  that  Mundy  is  supposed  to  have  more 
weight  with  him  than  almost  anyone  else;  and  as  it  is 
quite  certain  that  our  good  Admiral  cannot  be  said  to 

*  Sir  James  Hudson,  G.C.B.  A  distinguished  diplomatist 
and  friend  of  Cavour,  remarkable  for  the  zeal  with  which  he  up- 
held the  cause  of  Italian  unity.  He  was  Minister  at  Turin  from 
1851  to  1863,  when  he  retired  from  the  diplomatic  service. 


ADMIRAL  MUNDY'S  INFLUENCE         77 

be  a  man  of  commanding  mind,  it  shows  how  easily 
very  inferior  people  may  guide  him,  if  he  chances  to 
be  taken  with  them. 

The  English  travellers  who  were  to  be  set  at  him 
were  Lord  Llanover  and  Mr.  Edwin  James,  which  last, 
it  seems,  gives  himself  out  as  having  come  on  a  mission 
to  the  Dictator.  To  me  he  was  more  modest,  denying 
the  fact,  but  saying  that  Lord  Palmerston,  hearing  he 
was  going  to  Naples,  had  asked  him  to  give  Garibaldi 
good  advice.  I  had  no  hesitation  in  asking  both  of 
them  to  take  opportunities  of  speaking  to  Garibaldi, 
and  of  saying  that  the  sympathy  of  England,  to  which 
he  holds  much,  would  be  forfeited  if  he  is  seen  inclining 
to  Mazzinianism  or  taking  a  line  which  must  lead  to 
a  European  war;  and  I  think  they  both  of  them  seemed 
not  a  little  flattered  when  I  said  that  Garibaldi  would 
be  much  more  likely  to  consider  them  the  representa- 
tives of  the  English  people  than  he  would  me,  and  they 
promised  to  do  all  they  could. 

The  Admiral  was  also  to  speak  in  the  same  sense, 
and  I  begged  him  particularly  to  point  out  how  com- 
pletely he  will  be  playing  the  French  game  if  he  forces 
on  an  intervention.  Brenier  has  been  astounded  by 
getting  orders  to  leave  Naples  immediately,  and,  as  he 
only  got  them  by  telegraph,  he  doesn't  know  what 
it  means;  for,  till  the  King  leaves  his  country,  there 
seems  no  reason  for  the  foreign  Ministers  doing  so, 
and  if  they  must  not  stay  at  the  capital,  they  ought 
to  go  to  Gaeta.  I  hope  I  am  not  to  receive  similar 
instructions. 

I  cannot  even  surmise  what  turn  things  are  going  to 
take  here.  There  are  already  above  1,500  Sardinian 
troops  at  Naples,  and  they  are  also  said  to  have 
entered  the  Papal  States  from  the  north.  The  French 
at  the  same  time  have  added  5,000  men  to  their  Roman 
garrison,  and  have  almost  officially  announced  their 
determination  to  defend  Rome,  Civita  Vecchia,  Viterbo, 
and  Perugia — in  fact,  the  Patrimony  of  St.  Peter — 


78  NAPLES  [i860 

and  if  they  do  this  at  a  time  of  excitement  15,000 
men  will  not  be  sufficient;  and,  notwithstanding  all 
this,  there  are  symptoms  of  an  understanding  among 
the  chief  actors  which  I  cannot  comprehend. 

September  17. — The  symptoms  of  an  understanding 
between  France  and  Sardinia  certainly  do  not  appear 
very  evident  to-day,  for  we  have  just  heard  of  the 
withdrawal  of  the  French  Legation  from  Turin,  which 
Brenier  announced  as  a  fact,  and  as  having  been 
caused  by  the  Sardinian  invasion  of  the  Papal 
territory. 

The  Sardinian  Government  certainly  do  carry  on 
business  in  a  most  unconscionable  manner,  and  it 
was  strong  enough  to  send  to  the  Pope  as  an  ultimatum 
a  suggestion  to  give  up  Rome,  to  disband  his  foreign 
troops,  and  not  to  oppose  revolts  in  the  provinces; 
but  to  back  up  this  modest  proposal  by  a  summary 
invasion  without  waiting  for  an  answer  or  declaring 
war,  is  a  piece  of  impudence  which  no  country  but 
Sardinia  would  have  had  the  face  to  attempt. 

Garibaldi  has  just  published  a  sort  of  manifesto 
against  Cavour,  in  the  shape  of  a  letter  in  which  he 
declares  it  impossible  he  should  ever  be  reconciled 
with  the  man  who  consented  to  the  sale  of  an  Italian 
province;  and  this  letter  has  produced  immense 
dissatisfaction  among  the  moderate  party  here  who 
hold  to  the  Sardinian  Government,  of  which  they 
consider  Cavour  the  representative;  and  they  would 
now  give  their  ears  to  get  rid  of  their  Liberator,  who, 
they  find,  is  leading  them  by  a  road  they  did  not  wish 
to  travel. 

No  small  disgust  has  been  created  by  the  nomina- 
tion of  Alexandre  Dumas  as  the  Director  of  the 
Museum  and  of  Pompeii,  etc.,  and  people  fully  expect 
that,  with  such  a  blackguard  there,  some  of  the 
greatest  treasures  will  soon  be  missing.  The  said 
Alexandre  Dumas  is  lodged  at  one  of  the  royal  palaces, 
drinking  the  King's  wines  and  feasting  at  the  public 


ALEXANDRE  DUMAS  79 

expense  with  the  choice  company  that  he  is  in  the 
habit  of  keeping  about  him,  among  which  there  is  a 
very  charming  midship  woman,  who  does  duty  in  the 
yacht  in  a  dapper  jacket  and  trousers. 

I  was  very  glad  to-day  to  get  the  telegram  from 
Lord  John,  sent  on  from  Genoa  by  steamer  desiring 
me  to  stay  at  Naples  till  further  orders,  for  I  was 
rather  afraid  the  bad  example  of  the  French  might 
be  followed,  which  would,  I  think,  have  been  a 
mistake. 

The  country  is  in  a  very  uncomfortable  state,  for 
police  there  is  next  to  none,  while  there  is  a  decided 
disposition  to  annex  property  belonging  to  other 
people. 

At  Castellamare  we  have  now  got  120  good  Pied- 
montese  soldiers  to  look  after  our  convicts,  and  I  can 
assure  you  they  were  much  wanted,  for  the  National 
Guard  thought  the  best  way  of  managing  the  prisoners 
was  by  keeping  them  in  good  humour;  so  they  struck 
off  their  chains  and  let  them  go  out  without  a  guard 
in  bands  of  two  or  three  hundred  at  a  time.  The  odd 
thing  was  that,  as  they  look  upon  themselves  as 
political  victims,  they  had  such  confidence  that 
Garibaldi  would  release  them  that  they  almost  all  came 
back  to  their  prisons  at  night,  though  some  were  too 
wise. 

September  19. — Garibaldi  came  back  yesterday  from 
Sicily,  where  he  had  gone  to  see  if  people  were  as 
discontented  as  was  said ;  and  because  he  was  received 
with  great  clamour  he  is  satisfied  that  the  island  is  in 
good  humour. 

Immediately  on  his  return  he  went  off  to  Capua, 
where  an  attack  was  made  this  morning,  which 
resulted  in  the  troops,  without  loss  on  their  own  side, 
beating  off  the  assailants  with  a  loss  of  about  150  men, 
which  will  put  the  King's  people  in  spirits.  An  attack 
on  a  walled  town  without  ladders  or  cannon  sounds 
like  a  curious  proceeding,  but  it  must  probably  have 


80  NAPLES  [i860 

been  expected  that  the  garrison  was  ready  to  capi- 
tulate. Since  his  return  Garibaldi  is  said  to  talk  more 
wildly  than  ever  of  going  against  Rome,  and  it  is 
thought  he  may  try  to  push  on  before  the  Piedmontese 
can  get  between  him  and  it.  It  seems  that  one  of  the 
reasons  that  make  him  feel  such  profound  admiration 
for  King  Victor  Emmanuel  is  that  His  Majesty  gave 
him  3, 000.  000  francs  out  of  his  private  purse  to  enable 
him  to  undertake  the  Sicilian  expedition,  which 
Cavour  thought  too  desperate.  This  is  a  fact,  and  not 
a  rumour. 

Another  thing  that  I  cannot  quite  answer  for, 
though  I  believe  it  to  be  true,  is  that  Garibaldi  has  sent 
to  Turin  an  aide-de-camp  of  the  King's,  who  had  been 
attached  to  his  person  throughout  the  expedition, 
to  say  that  he  will  at  once  have  the  annexation  if  the 
King  will  change  his  Ministers.  His  hatred  against 
Cavour  knows  no  bounds,  but  we  must  wait  to  see 
whether  the  "  Galantuomo  "  consents  to  the  trifling 
sacrifice. 

By  the  way,  there  has  very  nearly  been  a  vacancy 
in  the  representation  of  Marylebone,  Mr.  Edwin  James 
having  gone  down  this  morning  to  see  what  was  going 
on  at  Capua,  when  a  round  shot,  which  did  not  seem 
disposed  to  respect  the  sacred  character  of  a  British 
M.P.,  came  popping  through  the  splashboard  of  the 
carriage  in  which  he  was.  I  forget  whether  I  men- 
tioned yesterday  that  Mazzini  had  arrived  here,  and 
that  one  or  two  demonstrations  that  were  wished  to  be 
made  in  his  honour  have  been  put  down.  Another 
person  has  also  arrived,  and  caused  no  less  sensation — 
i.e.,  the  fair  Skittles* — who  is  now  at  the  Hotel 
Vittoria,  where  she  will  meet  another  frail  sister, 
known  as  the  Countess  Martini,  but  now  travelling  in 
a  becoming  uniform  with  Garibaldi's  army,  to  which 
she  professed  to  be  a  Florence  Nightingale,  and  in  that 

*  A  notorious  demi-mondaine. 


LOSSES  AT  CAPUA  81 

character  collected  offerings,  which,  however,  stopped 
short  in  her  own  pocket,  at  which  the  Dictator  is 
not  over  well  pleased. 

I  mentioned  yesterday  that  our  neighbours,  the 
convicts,  had  been  having  some  entire  liberty,  and  I 
find  that  on  going  over  the  muster  not  less  than  160 
are  absent  without  leave :  however,  they  will  probably 
not  remain  in  this  neighbourhood,  and  will  do  us  no 
harm. 

September  21. — The  loss  at  Capua  seems  to  have  been 
greater  than  was  at  first  said,  and  the  casualties  are 
now  set  down  at  600,  but  a  more  serious  attack  was 
expected  for  to-day.  Garibaldi  is  so  hot  upon  his 
Roman  project  that  people  are  afraid  he  may  try  to 
push  on  there  with  a  few  thousand  men  at  once,  so 
as  not  to  be  intercepted  by  the  Piedmontese,  who, 
however,  cannot  be  long  before  they  do  this,  as  they 
cannot  meet  with  any  serious  opposition  on  their  road ; 
and,  unprovoked  as  was  the  invasion  of  the  Pope's 
dominions,  everyone  must  wish  them  the  speediest 
possible  success. 

September  23. — The  appearance  of  affairs  here  does 
not  improve,  and  it  is  said  that  the  provisional 
Government,  which  was  mostly  composed  of  moderate 
men,  will  positively  not  remain,  and  are  to  be  replaced 
by  others  who  are  either  republicans  themselves  or 
who  will  allow  others  to  make  them  drift  into  that 
channel. 

Mazzini  is  here,  as  I  think  I  told  you,  and  it  is  said 
that  he  has  made  his  peace  with  Garibaldi  by  declaring 
himself  a  convert  to  the  project  of  a  United  Italy  under 
Victor  Emmanuel,  and  to  have  abandoned  republican 
principles ;  and  it  is  added  that  the  Dictator,  satisfied 
with  this  assurance,  has  consented  to  be  reconciled 
with  him. 

It  is  scarcely  conceivable  that  a  man  of  his  deter- 
mination of  character  should  at  the  same  time  be  so 
childishly  weak  and  credulous. 

7 


82  NAPLES  [lseo 

Ledru  Rollin*  is  likewise  either  here  or  coming 
immediately,  and  there  is  every  appearance  of  the 
republicans  making  a  push,  but  the  approach  of  the 
Sardinians  will  be  a  great  check  to  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  Garibaldi  is  daily  losing  credit 
with  the  moderates,  and  will  have  to  lean  more  and 
more  on  the  republicans.  He  is  now  showing  a  dis- 
position to  lay  his  hands  on  about  £2,000.000  standing 
in  the  name  of  various  members  of  the  Royal  Family 
in  the  Great  Book,  which  in  all  countries  has  been  held 
sacred  even  by  revolutionary  Governments,  and 
this  will  disgust  many  people.  Alexandre  Dumas's 
nomination  to  the  Direction  of  the  Museum  was  so 
openly  and  generally  abused  that  he  has  actually  been 
shamed  into  going  away  and  giving  it  up.  The 
Neapolitan  captain,  Anguissola,  who  gave  up  the 
Veloce  in  such  a  discreditable  manner,  is  petted  and 
advanced,  while  an  exception  is  made  against  the 
captain  and  officers  of  the  only  vessel  which  performed 
its  duty  honourably,  and  they  are  not  allowed  to  give 
their  adhesion  to  the  new  Government;  and  altogether, 
according  to  the  present  system,  those  who  can  boast 
of  having  acted  with  the  most  notorious  treachery 
and  bad  faith  are  they  who  will  be  put  in  the  highest 
places. 

There  has  been  another  serious  check  to  the 
Garibaldians  near  Capua,  and  they  are  said  to  have 

*  B.  1807,  a.  1874.  Called  by  Victor  Hugo  "  the  Tribune  of 
the  Eevolution  of  February  1848."  During  the  reign  of  Louis 
Philippe  obtained  a  great  reputation  as  an  agitator  and  leader 
of  the  working-men's  party.  Elected  deputy  in  1841,  became  a 
member  of  the  Provisional  Government  in  1848;  elected  in  May 
one  of  the  five  in  whose  hands  the  Constituent  Assembly  placed 
the  interim  Government  of  France,  but  resigned  in  June.  Was  a 
candidate  for  the  Presidency  in  December,  when  he  was  defeated 
by  Louis  Napoleon.  Attempted  to  provoke  a  rising  against  the 
latter,  failed  and  fled  to  England,  and  joined  Kossuth,  Mazzini 
and  Ruge.  He  published  a  passionate  invective  against  England, 
Be  la  Decadence  de  VAngleterre,  but  for  twenty  years  continued  to 
live"alternately  in  London  and  Brussels  until  amnestied  in  1870. 


FEAE  OF  REPUBLICANS  83 

been  driven  out  of  Cajazzo,  which  they  had  occupied 
the  other  day  on  the  north-east  of  it,  and  to  which 
they  attached  such  importance,  and  they  are  said  to 
have  lost  a  considerable  number  of  prisoners.  The 
Royal  army  is  said  to  be  behaving  with  frightful 
brutality  in  the  town,  and  to  have  nailed  one  of  their 
Generals  to  the  gates.  If  he  was  preparing  to  betray 
his  men  he  certainly  deserved  the  lynching,  and 
Garibaldi's  whole  proceedings  with  regard  to  Capua 
look  as  if  he  had  calculated  on  partizans  inside  the 
town.  There  will  be  some  bloody  scenes  acted  there, 
for  the  Garibaldians  are  furious  at  the  opposition 
they  have  met  with,  and  vow  that  they  will  give  no 
quarter. 

Some  fine  bodies  of  men  have  been  joining  them  from 
Calabria,  but  will  they  hang  long  together  if  opposed  ? 

September  25. — The  battle  that  was  expected  at 
Capua  is  postponed,  to  the  disappointment  of  the 
numerous  British  visitors  who  had  gone  down  on 
purpose  to  witness  it,  and  whose  presence  ought  to 
have  been  sufficient  to  prevent  the  respective  Generals 
from  causing  them  such  a  shabby  vexation. 

The  advance  of  the  Sardinians  is  very  satisfactory 
to  the  Neapolitans,  who  are  daily  getting  more  afraid 
of  Mazzini  and  Ledru  Rollin,  who  is  certainly  here,  and 
who,  as  well  as  the  former,  has  had  an  interview  with 
Garibaldi;  but  these  wretched  people,  although  they 
groan  over  the  presence  of  the  republicans,  and  to 
strangers  avow  their  dread  of  the  line  taken  by 
Garibaldi,  dare  not  take  any  means  of  expressing  their 
feelings  to  him. 

What  a  capital  memorandum  that  was  of  the 
Sardinian  Government  on  the  entry  of  their  army  into 
the  Papal  States  !  If  it  had  only  left  out  about  the 
demand  that  the  Pope  should  dismiss  his  mercenaries 
it  would  have  been  perfect.  There  is  also  a  malicious 
humour  about  it  that  is  very  amusing  when  it  speaks 
of  the  young  King  of  Naples  not  only  having  turned  a 


84  NAPLES  [i860 

deaf  ear  to  England  and  France,  but  to  that  King  who 
took  the  most  undoubted  interest  in  his  welfare — 
i.e.,  Victor  Emmanuel. 

September  27.- — There  has  been  no  outward  progress 
in  affairs  during  the  last  few  days,  but  there  has,  I 
believe,  been  the  immense  advance  in  Garibaldi  having 
been  brought  to  see  that  he  must  abandon  the  Roman 
part  of  his  project;  so  that  there  are  hopes  of  these 
Neapolitan  matters  being  brought  to  some  practical 
conclusion,  though  Garibaldi's  own  programme  will 
not  be  more  completely  carried  out  than  was  the 
Emperor's  by  the  peace  of  Villafranca. 

The  resistance  of  the  King's  troops  at  Capua  will 
put  the  Sardinians  in  an  awkward  position,  but  it  will 
not  do  for  them  to  hesitate  now ;  and  notwithstanding 
all  their  protestations  of  a  wish  to  be  friends  with 
Francis  II.,  nothing  remains  for  them  but  to  come  and 
give  him  the  coup  de  grace,  and  to  take  absolute 
possession  of  the  kingdom,  which  is  fast  getting  as 
anxious  to  be  out  of  Garibaldi's  hands  as  it  was  a  few 
weeks  ago  to  get  into  them. 

To  the  despair  of  his  real  admirers,  he  unfortunately 
considers  himself  a  great  administrator,  and  issues 
decrees,  of  which  some  are  good,  but  others  as 
monstrous  as  anything  that  was  issued  by  the  kings 
his  predecessors.  He  loves  to  come  down  upon  the 
priests,  and,  though  I  have  certainly  little  enough 
sympathy  for  all  that  fry,  I  must  confess  that  they  will 
have  good  right  to  grumble  a  bit.  He  began  by  con- 
fiscating the  property  of  the  Jesuits;  then  he  laid 
hands  on  that  of  the  bishops,  who  are  to  have  an 
allowance  of  "  not  more  "  than  2,000  ducats,  or  £330, 
a  year ;  and  now  there  is  a  thundering  decree  by  which 
priests  who  preach  "  censure  upon  the  institutions  or 
laws  "  are  to  be  fined  and  imprisoned;  and,  though  the 
minimums  of  these  fines  and  imprisonments  are 
prescribed,  the  maximums  are  not,  so  that  the 
culprits  are  liable  to  anything  short  of  death,  and 


ST.  JANUARIUS  AND  GARIBALDI  85 

the  reverend  padres  had  therefore  better  mind  their 
P's  and  Q's. 

I  am  excessively  disgusted  at  having  been  kept  so 
entirely  in  the  dark  as  to  anything  that  may  have  been 
said  at  Paris,  Vienna,  Berlin,  St.  Petersburg,  or 
London,  upon  Neapolitan  affairs ;  but  I  can  assure  you 
that  I  am  as  absolutely  ignorant  of  all  the  European 
features  of  the  Neapolitan  affairs  as  if  I  had  nothing  to 
do  with  them,  for  not  one  single  word  has  been  sent 
to  me  from  any  of  these  places  from  the  time  of 
Garibaldi's  landing  in  Sicily.  I  presume  that  there 
must  have  been  some  conversations  about  our  con- 
cerns, and  I  do  not  think  it  fair  that  they  should  have 
been  kept  from  me.  However,  I  am  now  so  near  my 
last  hour  that  I  should  be  in  charity  with  all  men 
when  I  expire  and  shall  reserve  all  my  wrath  for 
Hammond,  whom  I  will  haunt  when  the  grave  closes 
over  the  Neapolitan  mission. 

September  29. — It  is  amusing  to  us,  who  are  on  the 
spot,  to  see  the  absurd  mistakes  that  the  best-informed 
people  in  England  are  making  about  Garibaldi  and 
Neapolitan  affairs.  The  Times  and  Punch  immediately 
began  to  imagine  him  making  war  upon  St.  Januarius 
and  analysing  the  blood  of  the  Saint,  when  in  point  of 
fact  he  was  treating  him  with  the  greatest  respect. 
Indeed,  the  liquefaction  came  off  last  week  with  the 
usual  eclat,  and  with  one  decided  improvement  for  the 
benefit  of  the  devout  worshippers,  by  the  Saint  being 
subjected  to  the  rules  of  military  punctuality.  He 
does  not  generally  condescend  to  allow  his  blood  to 
liquefy  till  the  true  believers,  having  exhausted 
both  their  patience  and  their  prayers,  fall  to  work 
to  abuse  and  slang  him  in  good  round  terms.  This 
time,  how  ever,  the  miracle  was  announced  for  nine 
o'clock,  and,  as  the  clock  struck,  sure  enough  it 
took  place,  thus  clearly  proving  to  the  multitude 
how  high  the  Dictator  stands  in  the  good  graces  of 
the  Saint. 


86  NAPLES  [i860 

The  next  amusing  thing  is  the  unbounded  admira- 
tion which  is  expressed  because  Garibaldi  does  not 
allow  his  actions  to  be  influenced  by  Cavour's  hostility 
to  him  !  Why,  his  hatred  of  Cavour  is,  after  the 
Unity,  the  one  idea  which  influences  every  step  he 
takes,  and  he  seems  to  me  to  have  given  himself  no 
pains  to  conceal  it. 

He  first  published  a  letter  saying  he  never  would 
be  reconciled  with  Cavour,  and  next  he  sends  a  letter 
to  Victor  Emmanuel  offering  to  have  immediate 
annexation  if  he  will  dismiss  his  Minister ;  or,  in  other 
words,  making  the  fate  of  the  whole  kingdom  of  Naples 
depend  upon  his  having  his  revenge  upon  Cavour. 

However,  Cavour  has  done  him,  as  well  as  the 
Italian  cause,  immense  service  in  taking  the  Roman 
business  out  of  his  hands;  for  what  his  mad  project 
would  have  come  to  may  be  surmised  from  what  is 
now  taking  place  at  Capua,  where  this  irresistible 
army,  that  was  to  eat  up  Lamoriciere,  to  drive  the 
French  out  of  Rome,  and  finally  to  master  the  famous 
Quadrilateral,  find  themselves  stopped  for  three  weeks 
by  the  despised  Neapolitans  and  a  fourth-rate  fortress, 
which  they  may  very  likely  not  be  able  to  get  into  at 
all  till  they  get  the  Sardinians  to  help  them.  Matters 
may  change  before  my  letter  is  sent  off,  but  up  to 
to-day  the  accounts  are  not  encouraging  for  the 
Garibaldians. 

The  Sicilians  maintain  their  new  character  of  being 
fit  for  nothing.  Colonel  Dunn,  a  former  English  officer, 
was  supposed  to  have  done  wonders  in  organising 
a  Sicilian  brigade,  from  whom  immense  things  were 
expected,  and  who,  on  landing  here  last  week,  were  at 
once  pushed  to  Capua,  whose  gates  were  almost  ex- 
pected to  fall  down  at  their  approach;  but,  instead  of 
this,  on  the  first  shots  being  fired  on  them,  they  threw 
down  their  arms  and  ran  away  as  hard  as  their  legs 
could  carry  them.  Their  officers  have  in  consequence 
been  reduced  to  the  ranks. 


RECONCILIATION  WITH  MAZZINI         87 

Besides  this,  the  officers  who  have  been  through  the 
campaign  are  beginning  to  complain  that  their  men 
do  not  fight  as  they  did;  but  I  take  the  fact  of  the 
matter  to  be  that  there  are  very  few  of  them  who 
have  ever  fought  at  all.  Except  at  Milazzo  and 
Reggio,  they  have  scarcely  had  to  face  a  shot,  and  a 
large  proportion  of  them  will  no  doubt  prove  to  be  true 
Neapolitans — i.e..  very  devils  against  an  enemy  who 
runs  away  as  soon  as  they  get  in  sight,  but  very 
poor  stuff  against  men  who  will  stand  up  against 
them. 

Capua  is  in  a  very  feverish  country,  and  the  malaria 
will  soon  begin  to  play  Old  Harry  among  them,  so, 
as  I  said  before,  they  must  have  the  Sardinians  to  get 
them  out  of  their  difficulties ;  but  what  excuse  is  to  be 
found  for  invading  the  country  and  knocking  on  the 
head  the  young  King,  who  with  40,000  or  50,000  men 
is  still  holding  his  ground.  However,  excuse  or  no 
excuse,  they  must  now  go  on,  for  if  Victor  Emmanuel 
stops  to  look  behind  him  we  shall  soon  see  him  become 
a  pillar  of  salt. 

The  Neapolitans  are  at  last  giving  proof  of  what  is 
for  them  a  great  act  of  courage  in  signing  addresses 
inviting  Victor  Emmanuel  to  come  at  once  and  take 
possession  of  the  Kingdom;  and  it  is  high  time,  for 
ugly  things  are  doing  which  very  much  lower  one's 
opinion  of  Garibaldi. 

A  new  Ministry  was  formed  yesterday,  and  the  man 
who  is  made  Minister  of  Marine  is  Anguissola,  who, 
while  he  commanded  the  Veloce,  deliberately  ran  it 
into  Palermo  and  gave  it  up  to  Garibaldi. 

His  reconciliation  with  Mazzini  is  true,  and  he  seems 
openly  to  adhere  to  the  doctrine  of  the  dagger,  for  in 
last  night's  Gazette  appeared  a  decree,  signed  by 
Garibaldi,  announcing  that  the  memory  of  Agesilao 
Milano,  who  tried  to  assassinate  the  King,  was 
"  sacred  to  the  country  on  whose  altars  he  had 
sacrificed  himself  with  incomparable  heroism,  while 


88  NAPLES  [i860 

freeing   her  from   the   tyrant  who    was    oppressing 
her." 

Six  months  ago  there  was  almost  convincing  proof 
that  he  was  encouraging  an  attempt  to  assassinate 
Maniscalco,  the  Prefect  of  Police  of  Palermo;  but  I 
thought  it  so  contrary  to  what  I  imagined  to  be  the 
character  of  the  man  that  I  never  would  believe  the 
evidence,  but  now  I  feel  no  doubt  whatever  that  it  was 
true. 


CHAPTER  IV 

NAPLES,  OCTOBER-NOVEMBER  1860 

["  The  battle  of  the  Volturno  saved  Naples  from  the  Bour- 
bons, but  did  not  deliver  Capua  to  Garibaldi.  It  redressed 
the  balance  of  the  war  which  had  begun  to  incline  against  him, 
but  did  not  weigh  down  the  scales  on  his  side.  A  condition  of 
military  stale-mate  continued  for  more  than  three  weeks  of 
October  until  Victor  Emmanuel's  army  arrived  upon  the 
scene  "  (Garibaldi  and  the  Making  of  Italy,  chap.  xiv.).  These 
words  of  Mr.  Trevelyan's  sum  up  the  military  position  in  the 
month  of  October.  Mr.  Elliot's  journal  gives  a  picture  of  the 
political  side  of  events.  From  the  time  of  the  arrival  of  King 
Victor  Emmanuel  and  the  Sardinian  troops  in  the  South  of 
Italy  it  was  inevitable  that  Garibaldi's  influence  should  wane ; 
his  military  talent  and  high,  unselfish  patriotism  had  achieved 
almost  miraculous  results,  but  his  genius  was  not  construc- 
tive, and  the  task  of  consolidating  United  Italy  passed  into 
other  hands.  Mr.  Elliot  left  Naples  before  the  fall  of  Gaeta, 
but  the  issue  of  the  siege  was  already  a  foregone  conclusion; 
on  the  19th  of  January  1861  the  last  of  the  French  ships  at 
Gaeta  was  withdrawn,  the  blockade  was  enforced  by  Admiral 
Persano,  and  on  the  13th  of  February  the  fortress  capitulated, 
the  King  and  Queen*  embarked  in  a  French  steamer  for 
Civita  Vecchia  and  took  up  their  residence  at  Rome.  (See 
Life  of  the  Prince  Consort,  vol.  ii.,  p.  249.)] 

October  2. — Every  time  that  I  have  to  go  into  town — 
which,  thank  goodness,  I  have  no  longer  to  do  every 
day — I  hear  things  painted  out  in  blacker  colours,  and 
the  hero  of  a  month  ago  spoken  of  in  very  different 
language  from  what  used  to  be  used.     He  is  now 

*  The  Queen,  who  showed  great  courage  throughout  the  siege 
and  the  previous  disturbances,  was  a  Bavarian  Princess  and 
youngest  sister  of  the  late  Empress  of  Austria. 

89 


90  NAPLES  [i860 

abused  for  much  that  is  not  his  fault,  as  well  as  for  a 
good  deal  that  is. 

The  poor  people  complain  that  there  is  no  work,  that 
food  is  much  dearer,  that  their  horses  and  donkeys 
are  carried  to  Capua  and  not  paid  for,  the  cabs  and 
hackney  coaches  carried  off  to  the  camp  for  the 
wounded,  etc. 

The  republicans  complain  that  he  is  going  to  hand 
over  the  country  as  a  province  to  Piedmont,  and 
printed  notices  are  in  circulation,  pressing  the 
Neapolitans — after  shedding  their  blood  (!)  to  get  rid 
of  one  King — not  to  allow  themselves  to  be  transferred 
to  another;  and  the  annexationists  complain  that  the 
real  government  of  the  coimtry  has  been  put  into  the 
hands  of  the  republicans,  who  are  working  the  pro- 
vinces in  their  own  views;  that  the  expenses  are 
increasing ;  that  not  a  farthing  comes  into  the  Treasury ; 
that  plundering  is  going  on  in  every  department,  and 
nothing  but  confusion  everywhere — all  of  which  is 
perfectly  true,  and  will  go  on  increasing  till  the 
direction  of  matters  is  got  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
people  who  now  conduct  them. 

Craven*  was  down  at  Caserta  two  days  ago  to  see 
Garibaldi  about  his  railway  affairs,  and  the  account 
of  his  audience  is  most  amusing.  It  seems  that  the 
Dictator  always  takes  a  sleep  after  dinner,  and  Craven 
was  ushered  into  the  room,  which  was  full  of  people, 
just  as  he  was  preparing  to  go  to  bed.  The  Dictator 
asked  what  he  wanted,  but  did  not  the  least  interrupt 
his  proceedings,  making  the  inquiry  while  his  head  and 
shoulders  were  being  slipped  out  of  a  red  shirt,  previous 
to  being  encased  in  something  else.  Craven  made  his 
speech,  to  which  Garibaldi  answered,  being  then  busily 
employed  in  uncasing  his  nether  limbs,  after  which, 

*  Augustus  Craven,  a  retired  diplomatist  who  had  made 
Naples  his  home  since  1853.  Translated  into  French  the  Corre- 
spondence of  Lord  Palmerston  and  the  Prince  Consort.  Was  the 
husband  of  the  well-known  authoress  of  the  Recit  d'une  Sosur. 


CRAVEN  AND  GARIBALDI  91 

with  a  "  By  yoitr  leave/'  he  slipped  into  bed,  and  the 
conversation  continued  till  it  was  brought  to  a  con- 
clusion by  the  great  man,  from  his  bed,  signing  an 
order  of  some  kind,  which  Craven  carried  off.  The 
scene  must  have  been  most  amusing,  and  it  took  place 
within  one  room  of  that  in  which  the  late  King  died, 
a  year  and  a  half  ago. 

October  4. — The  affair  before  Capua  turns  out  to 
have  been  an  uncommonly  serious  business — a  sort 
of  Inkerman,  in  which  it  was  a  toss-up  whether  the 
whole  expeditionary  army  would  not  be  destroyed; 
and,  if  the  royal  troops  had  not  been  checked,  a  few 
hours  more  would  have  seen  them  well  on  towards 
Naples.  Garibaldi,  as  usual,  seems  to  have  performed 
marvels,  and  some  of  his  followers  showed  themselves 
worthy  of  their  chief,  but  many  of  them  cut  and  ran 
early  in  the  day,  which  makes  the  resistance  of  the 
others  the  more  gallant. 

There  are,  of  course,  multitudes  of  reports  of  what 
took  place,  but  every  single  account  that  deserves  the 
slightest  credit  shows  the  utter  worthlessness  of  the 
whole  southern  population  as  far  as  fighting  is  con- 
cerned. It  was  at  first  said  that  the  Calabrians 
fought  well,  but  even  this  turns  out  to  be  untrue, 
except  when  the  enemy  was  at  a  very  great  distance, 
while  the  other  Neapolitans  and  the  Sicilians  did  not 
fight  at  all;  and  the  official  paper  is  talking  angrily 
of  the  punishments  to  be  inflicted  on  the  runaways. 
However,  the  success  of  the  resistance  was  at  last 
decisive,  and,  besides  the  killed  and  wounded — who, 
they  say,  are  very  numerous — they  have  nearly  3,000 
prisoners  to  show,  which  is  no  small  matter. 

Their  own  loss  is  at  the  same  time  so  great 
that,  if  the  royalists  have  the  pluck  (of  which  there 
is  not  much  chance)  to  try  it  again,  they  will  find 
the  best  of  Garibaldi's  men  very  much  reduced  in 
numbers. 

There  is,  however,  now  a  new  element  to  take  into 


92  NAPLES  [i860 

calculation,  which  is  the  part  that  Sardinia  will  play. 
When  Villaraarina  heard  how  badly  things  were  going 
for  Garibaldi  at  Capua  he  immediately  sent  to  the 
front  some  hundreds  of  the  picked  Sardinian  troops 
who  are  here  maintaining  order,  though  I  believe 
none  of  these  arrived  in  time  to  take  part  in  the  action ; 
but  there  they  were,  sent  to  a  field  of  action  in  order 
to  join  in  it,  which  may  be  sufficient  to  induce  their 
royal  master  to  throw  off  the  mask.  But,  whether 
these  men  fought  or  not,  it  is  certain  that  the  fortune 
of  the  day  was  in  great  part  decided  by  a  number  of 
Sardinian  artillerymen,  who  had  been  sent  disguised 
as  Garibaldians,  in  red  shirts  to  serve  the  General's 
guns,  he  having  no  men  up  to  the  work.  What  a 
way  of  making  war  for  a  King  who  professes  to  be  the 
Galantuomo  far  excellence  ! 

October  6.— Nothing  new  that  I  know  of,  except 
that  it  is  said— with  I  don't  know  what  truth— that 
several  thousand  Piedmontese  troops  are  to  arrive 
here  at  once.  Pallavicini  has  been  appointed  Pro- 
Dictator,  which  is  rather  a  move  towards  Sardinia, 
and  he  has  written  a  letter  to  "  My  dear  Mazzini ' 
to  leave  Naples,  where  his  presence  troubles  the 
Unity.  The  evident  intimacy  of  all  these  gentlemen 
is  a  suspicious  business. 

We  had  another  murder  two  nights  ago  within  about 
a  hundred  yards  of  this  house,  and  I  am  told  that  there 
was  one  more  yesterday.  Within  the  last  six  weeks 
there  have  been  three  or  four  within  ear-shot  of  our 
door,  and  there  is  not  a  talk  of  anyone  being  taken  up 
or  tried;  and  the  same  thing  is  going  on  all  over  the 
country,  so  that  it  is  high  time  that  some  sort  of 
Government  were  established.  Of  course,  I  do  not 
include  among  the  murders  the  killing  of  the  old 
policemen  and  spies,  which  took  place  some  time  ago 
and  was  looked  upon  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  which, 
moreover,  was  not  done  as  extensively  as  might  have 
been  feared. 


NEGLECT  OF  THE  WOUNDED  93 

Would  you  conceive  it  possible  that  the  Neapolitans, 
who  pretend  that  a  great  national  movement  has 
been  going  on  in  their  country,  have  not  moved  a  hand 
for  the  reception  of  the  sick  and  wounded  from 
Capua,  some  of  whom,  amounting  to  many  hundreds, 
were  left  for  twenty-four  hours  after  being  brought  to 
Naples  without  persons  being  found  even  to  give  them 
a  glass  of  water,  and  the  authorities  have  now  sum- 
moned to  the  work  the  French  Soeurs  de  Charite 
from  Castellamare  ? 

It  is  a  literal  truth  that  of  all  the  Neapolitans  I  am 
acquainted  with,  most  of  whom  profess  the  hottest 
patriotism,  not  one  single  one  that  I  have  heard  of 
joined  Garibaldi,  or  risked  the  tip  of  his  nose,  and 
now  they  do  not  even  stir  to  save  the  sick  and 
wounded. 

Arrivabene,  the  correspondent  of  the  Daily  News, 
has  been  missing  since  the  morning  of  the  first.  He 
was  not  a  man  to  run  into  any  needless  danger,  and 
he  may  have  been  taken  prisoner. 

October  8. — I  am  in  constant  expectation  of  receiv- 
ing orders  to  start  without  more  delay,  and  now  that 
Victor  Emmanuel  seems  to  be  positively  coming  it 
may  be  considered  that  I  ought  to  evacuate  the  place 
before  he  takes  possession.  Whatever  he  may  intend 
to  do  himself,  it  is  quite  time  that  his  troops  should 
arrive,  if  it  is  meant  to  prevent  King  Francis  II.  from 
reappearing  in  his  capital  some  fine  morning,  as  he 
was  within  an  ace  of  doing  this  day  last  week;  and  if 
they  do  not  come  soon  it  will  be  evident  to  the  world 
that  Garibaldi  has  broken  down  before  Capua.  His 
own  officers  are  already  pretty  well  aware  of  this, 
and  the  people  of  Naples  are  becoming  alive  to  it, 
and  the  long  and  short  of  the  matter  is  that,  unless 
he  had  the  Sardinian  army  to  look  to  for  support,  his 
case  would  be  as  bad  a  one  as  could  well  be  imagined. 
He  has  not  got  above  twelve  thousand  men  before 
Capua,    and,    though    his    Piedmontese,    Lombards, 


94  NAPLES  [i860 

Poles,  Hungarians,  etc.,  are  men  he  can  thoroughly 
trust  to,  he  can  count  on  none  of  the  others,  the 
Sicilians,  Calabrians,  and  other  south  country  volun- 
teers being  absolutely  useless. 

The  fine  character  one  was  taught  to  attribute  to 
the  Sicilians  turns  out  a  thorough  imposture,  and  the 
Calabrians  have  shown  themselves  to  be  no  better. 
The  day  before  yesterday  these  hardy  mountaineers 
discovered  that  they  had  had  fighting  enough,  and 
wanted  to  return  home.  Their  officers  argued  the 
point  with  them,  and  did  their  best  to  persuade  them 
to  remain,  which  at  last  they  said  they  would  do  if 
it  was  promised  that  cannon  should  never  be  used 
against  them ;  and,  when  this  could  not  be  guaranteed, 
the  Dictator  had  to  be  sent  for,  but  all  his  eloquence 
and  influence  could  not  prevent  1,200  of  them  from 
giving  up  the  game  and  going  home. 

A  man  who  was  present  said  it  was  most  amusing 
to  see  the  packs  and  packages  of  these  patriots 
examined  before  they  were  dismissed,  and  to  watch 
the  quantity  and  variety  of  the  loot  they  were  forced 
to  disgorge.  The  presence  of  these  heroes  does  not 
make  the  state  of  the  country  any  more  comfortable 
for  the  moment,  for  there  is  not  an  attempt  to  enforce 
any  law  or  to  hinder  any  crime,  and  the  great  Liberator 
has  carried  his  nations  of  liberation  to  an  extent  that 
will  make  the  quiet  inhabitants  of  the  land  smart  for 
many  a  day. 

A  few  weeks  ago  there  were  at  Castellamare  about 
1,400  convicts  in  the  prisons  and  hulks,  and  now  there 
are  barely  300,  so  that  above  a  thousand  of  the  most 
thorough  cut-throat  villains  have  been  let  loose  from 
this  place  alone,  and,  as  the  same  thing  is  going  on 
throughout  the  country,  it  is  not  surprising  that  mur- 
ders and  robberies  go  on  merrily.  The  murders  are 
taken,  however,  with  a  coolness  that  is  quite  de- 
lightful, and  the  remarks  about  them  are  almost 
invariably    coupled    with    a    declaration    that    the 


FLOGGING  PETITIONERS  95 

murderer  had  performed  a  useful  act  to  the  com- 
munity in  ridding  the  world  of  a  great  blackguard, 
and  no  doubt  the  remark  is  perfectly  true  nine  times 
out  of  ten. 

Though  ordinary  crimes  are  not  interfered  with, 
the  good  old  system  goes  on  of  shutting  people  up 
at  once  if  they  drop  an  idle  word  against  anyone  who 
wears  a  red  shirt,  and  in  the  provinces  they  carry  this 
still  further.  In  the  Abruzzi  the  Governor  received 
orders  from  Naples  to  try  to  prevent  petitions  being  got 
up  to  Victor  Emmanuel  to  come  to  take  possession 
of  the  kingdom,  and  the  Governor  thought  the  most 
effectual  way  of  putting  a  stop  to  the  petitions  was 
by  flogging  those  who  had  signed,  which  he  did, 
and  found  it  a  very  successful  way  of  preventing 
them. 

However,  they  may  flog  away  as  much  as  they 
please,  but  they  will  not  get  the  notion  of  annexation 
out  of  people's  heads,  for  it  is  still  the  general  cry 
of  the  country,  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the  repub- 
licans, who  have  been  working  very  hard. 

We  are  expecting  in  a  day  or  two  to  see  the  first 
arrival  of  the  "Excursionists'  (Lord  Palmerston's 
name  for  the  British  Garibaldian  legion),  and  are 
curious  to  find  whether  they  get  on  better  together 
than  the  detached  officers  who  are  already  here,  and 
who  can  find  no  better  amusement  for  their  leisure 
hours  than  that  of  cutting  each  other's  throats. 
There  are,  at  this  moment,  two  or  three  duels  on  the 
tapis,  which  are  to  come  off  to-morrow,  barring  sorties 
from  Capua,  one  of  the  combatants  being  Lord  St. 
Maur,  the  Duke  of  Somerset's  son,  whose  opponent, 
luckily  for  him,  has  got  a  sprain  in  his  sword  arm, 
but  whose  proposal  to  exchange  the  sword  for  the 
pistol  is  politely  declined  by  Lord  St.  Maur  or  his 
seconds — not  from  want  of  pluck,  however,  for  he 
has,  I  believe,  shown  plenty  of  that  on  various  occa- 
sions, especially  once  when  he  was  seen,  as  he  said, 


96  NAPLES  [i860 

"  Doing  a  little  Rarey  "*  with  a  restive  horse  while 
the  shot  was  falling  very  thick. 

According  to  all  accounts,  the  English  volunteers 
and  amateurs  have  shown  great  coolness  and  head; 
and  on  the  critical  1st  of  October,  as  well  as  previously, 
did  much  to  turn  the  fortune  of  the  day. 

Arrivabene  turns  out  to  have  been  taken  prisoner, 
and  is  quite  safe.  They  are  going  to  try  to  exchange 
him,  and  offer  two  Neapolitan  colonels  for  him: 
such  is  the  estimated  value  of  a  correspondent  of  a 
morning  newspaper. 

October  10. — For  the  last  two  or  three  days  all 
Naples  has  been  beaming  with  joy,  and  all  troubles  are 
supposed  to  be  at  an  end,  so  that  the  only  rueful 
countenance  to  be  seen  is  that  of  Her  Majesty's 
Minister,  who,  with  humble  resignation,  is  awaiting 
the  orders  to  pack  up  his  baggage  and  be  off.  I 
told  you,  or  if  I  did  not  you  must  know  it  in  some 
other  way,  that  invitations  were  sent  to  Victor 
Emmanuel  to  come  at  once  and  take  possession,  and 
these  invitations  have  been  accepted,  and  he  is  now 
on  his  way  here. 

What  gave  no  less  satisfaction  was  the  arrival  of  a 
couple  of  thousand  Sardinian  troops,  who  came 
yesterday,  and  who  have  made  the  capital  feel  that 
it  need  no  longer  fear  the  re-entry  of  the  Neapolitan 
army,  which,  not  without  reason,  was  looked  upon  as 
a  very  likely  occurrence  if  this  timely  assistance  had 
not  arrived. 

From  the  moment  that  Garibaldi  made  up  his  mind 
that  he  was  himself  virtually  beaten,  and  that  he  could 
not,  single-handed,  carry  out  the  programme  he  had 

*  Allusion  to  Mr.  Rarey,  a  well-known  horse-breaker.  In  the 
Memoirs  of  an  Ex-Minister,  vol.  ii.,  p.  128,  Lord  Malmesbury 
writes:  "Aug.  4th.  I  went  to  see  Mr.  Rarey's  establishment. 
We  had  Cruiser  the  untanieable  stallion  and  a  zebra  shown  us  as 
being  quite  tame.  The  former  certainly  appeared  to  be  so  com- 
pletely; he  followed  Mr.  Rarey  wherever  he  went  without  being 
led,  and  gave  him  his  foot  like  a  dog." 


VOTE  TO  BE  TAKEN  97 

so  loudly  proclaimed,  he  saw  that  it  was  only  through 
Sardinian  assistance  that  what  he  had  gained  could 
be  secured,  and  he  began  to  act  like  a  sane  man; 
but  after  all  his  published  abuse  of  Cavour,  and  his 
boastings  of  the  way  in  which  he  would  turn  "  M. 
Napoleon  "  out  of  Rome  and  the  Austrians  out  of 
Venice,  it  cost  him  a  severe  struggle  to  make  a  sort 
of  public  recognition  that  he  was  stopped  by  the 
deservedly  despised  army  of  Francis  II. 

He  had  to  entreat  Villamarina  to  let  him  have  the 
artillerymen,  who  are  really  supposed  to  have  saved 
his  army. 

The  more  one  sees  and  hears  what  the  army  is, 
the  more  marvellous  it  makes  what  he  has  accom- 
plished with  it. 

The  vote  of  the  country  upon  the  annexation  is  to 
be  taken  on  the  21st,  by  universal  suffrage,  and  with 
nominal  secret  voting  arranged  in  such  a  way  that  the 
votes  will  be  well  known  and  public  opinion  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  doubtfuls.  This  is  quite  an  un- 
necessary piece  of  trickery,  for  the  result  of  the  voting 
cannot  be  doubtful,  except  in  one  or  two  unimportant 
places. 

It  seems  to  me  curious  that,  as  the  vote  is  to  be  so 
soon,  Victor  Emmanuel  does  not  wait  till  it  is  over 
before  making  his  appearance.  With  the  legitimate 
King  still  at  Gaeta,  his  coming  will  have  an  odd  effect, 
and  it  is  rather  a  sell  for  him  that  the  other  does  not 
quit  the  dominions,  so  that  he  might  come  to  occupy 
a  vacant  throne. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  a  great  revolution 
could  take  place  without  great  evils ;  and  in  truth  the 
state  of  the  country  is  as  bad  as  possible,  and  all  the 
old  abuses  are  continued  and  sometimes  exaggerated 
by  the  new  officials,  who  imprison  and  flog  on  suspicion 
or  slight  proof  of  political  misdemeanours,  while  crime 
is  left  totally  unpunished. 

Yesterday  we  had  another  attempted  murder  here, 

8 


98  NAPLES  [i860 

but  the  victim  may  recover.     The  liberation  of  the 
galley-slaves  was  too  bad. 

Naples,  October  15. — To-day  we  have  had  the  land- 
ing of  the  English  "  Excursionists,"  who  arrived 
yesterday  and  were  horribly  disgusted  to  find  that, 
though  they  had  been  expected  for  a  week,  nothing 
was  ready  for  them,  so  that  they  had  to  remain  twenty- 
four  hours  longer  on  board.  They  are  monstrous 
fine,  business-like  looking  fellows,  and  the  sooner 
they  are  at  the  front  and  fighting  the  better,  for  there 
they  will  do  us  credit,  while  here  they  are  certain 
to  do  us  very  much  the  reverse. 

Colonel  Peard,  Garibaldi's  famous  Englishman, 
declares  that  anything  disreputable  which  took  place 
on  the  march  from  Reggio  to  Naples  was  done  by  our 
countrymen.  This  is  not  a  pleasant  distinction  in  a 
foreign  land. 

The  Major  Styles  who  collected  the  English  regi- 
ment has  made  a  bad  start,  for  before  he  had  been 
here  an  hour  he  found  himself  under  arrest  and 
threatened  with  a  court-martial  on  account  of  some 
pecuniary  transactions  connected  with  the  regiment. 
I  believe  the  other  officers  are  disgusted  at  finding 
that  this  "  Captain  Styles,  late  of  the  Guards,"  had 
only  been  a  sergeant  in  the  regiment;  but,  if  they 
can  only  get  a  little  good  fighting  to  do  it  will  put  them 
all  in  good  humour.  They  were  to  go  on  to  Caserta 
to-day,  and  it  is  by  no  means  impossible  that  they 
may  have  had  their  hands  in  what  was  going  on,  for 
this  morning  Garibaldi  sent  to  beg  for  more  Sardinian 
soldiers,  showing  plainly  that  he  was  or  expected  to 
be  hard  pushed,  for  there  were  already  between  three 
and  four  thousand  of  these  between  Naples  and  Caserta, 
which  was  thought  sufficient  to  cover  the  capital  till 
Cialdini  comes  up  with  the  bulk  of  the  army.  He  is 
advancing  with  18,000  men  and  Victor  Emmanuel. 

October  16. — Yesterday's  alarm  of  a  sortie  from 
Capua  is  now  said  to  have  been  but  a  trifling  affair,  in 


ARRIVABENE  LIBERATED  99 

which  the  brunt  was  borne  by  the  Piedmontese,  who 
had  been  called  to  the  front  and  who  repulsed  the 
Neapolitans. 

Arrivabene  made  his  appearance  in  Naples  last 
night,  having  been  liberated  by  the  King's  orders  as 
an  act  of  courtesy  to  the  Queen.  The  meaning  of 
this,  I  believe,  is  that  among  the  letters  he  wrote  to 
his  friends  in  England  there  was  one  for  Lady  Ely, 
who  was  known  to  be  one  of  the  Queen's  Ladies. 
He  is  very  indignant,  without  reason  as  I  think, 
at  having  been  kept  prisoner  at  all,  as  he  declared 
to  me  in  the  most  positive  manner  that  he  was  a 
non-combatant,  and  had  neither  arms  nor  uniform. 
To  other  people,  when  he  wishes  to  make  himself  out  a 
hero,  he  says  that  he  shot  one  man  with  his  revolver 
before  he  was  taken;  and  certainly  on  all  ordinary 
occasions  he  is  fond  of  exhibiting  both  sword  and 
uniform,  so  that,  being  taken  in  the  enemy's  lines, 
he  was,  I  think,  quite  liable  to  be  kept  prisoner. 

I  was  right  enough  yesterday  in  saying  that  the 
British  "  Excursionists  "  could  not  too  soon  be  sent 
to  the  front,  for  last  night  they  immediately  dis- 
tinguished themselves  in  a  truly  national  maimer  by 
getting  drunk  and  disorderly,  and  in  sleeping  on  and 
under  the  tables  in  the  principal  cafe  of  Naples,  which 
has  to-day  been  closed  in  consequence  of  them.  They 
have  not  yet  been  here  forty-eight  hours,  and  already 
some  extremely  amusing  applications  have  been  made 
by  them  to  the  Consul.  Some  of  them  are  in  irons, 
and  protest  against  being  treated  as  soldiers,  saying 
they  came  out  as  excursionists,  and  are  not  liable  to 
military  control  and  discipline.  Another  came  with  a 
touching  appeal,  saying  that  they  had  been  ordered 
to  Caserta,  but  that  he  was  so  incomplete  in 
the  knowledge  of  the  management  of  his  weapon 
that  he  protested  against  being  sent  out  to  be 
slaughtered. 

I  hear  that  the  King  and  his  people  at  Gaeta  are 


100  NAPLES  [i860 

furious  with  us  English,  and  especially  with  Admiral 
Mundy,  for  sending,  as  they  declare,  seamen  to  point 
the  guns  against  Capua.  It  is  not  surprising,  for  the 
Italian  papers  have  been  singing  the  praises  of  some 
of  the  sailors  from  the  ships  of  war  who  are  supposed 
to  have  rendered  important  service  to  Garibaldi.  I 
don't  know  of  any  having  actually  served  the  guns, 
but  certainly  one  seaman  of  the  Renown,  having  been 
appealed  to  to  mount  a  disabled  gun,  set  to  work,  and, 
with  a  little  help,  got  it  on  its  carriage  and  took  it  off. 
There  are,  however,  deserters  from  the  ships,  and  it  is 
very  likely  some  of  them  may  have  been  taking  an 
active  part ;  and  even  yesterday,  at  the  muster  of  the 
"  Excursionists,"  I  myself  saw  two  of  the  Agamem- 
non's men  in  the  ranks,  evidently  determined  to  go 
up  to  Caserta.  While  this  sort  of  thing  is  going  on, 
no  persuasion  would  convince  the  Neapolitans  that 
the  people  are  not  sent  by  the  Government  or  the 
Admiral.  A  Neapolitan  has  no  taste  for  the  near 
neighbourhood  of  a  place  where  bullets  are  flying  or 
hard  knocks  to  be  expected,  and  he  cannot  under- 
stand that  an  English  sailor  feels  an  irresistible 
attraction  for  them. 

The  French  Admiral  went  off  this  morning  with 
the  flagship  and  a  two-decker,  no  one  knows  where, 
without  giving  a  hint  of  his  proceedings  to  anyone. 

The  Cressy  is  expected  back  to-morrow  or  next  day, 
so  that  the  captain*  will  be  here  to  see  the  entrance 
of  Victor  Emmanuel. 

I  this  morning  got  from  Gaeta  a  note  from  General 
Casella,  invoking  the  judgment  of  Europe  upon  the 
late  decree  in  honour  of  Milano's  memory,  which  has 
certainly  much  damaged  Garibaldi  in  public  estimation. 

October  19. — The  steamer  did  not  go,  but  I  have 
nothing  to  add.     The  election  is  the  day  after  to- 

*  Captain  the  Hon.  Charles  G.  J.  B.  Elliot,  C.B.,  R.N.,  com- 
manding H.M.S.  Cressy ;  afterwards  Admiral  of  the  Fleet  Sir 
Charles,  K.C.B.,  younger  brother  of  Mr.  Elliot. 


QUIET  ELECTIONS  101 

morrow,  but  we  are  told  it  may  perhaps  be  a  fort- 
night before  the  result  of  it  can  be  officially  given  out, 
and,  from  a  telegram  received  last  night,  I  suppose  I 
am  to  remain  for  that. 

Nothing  new  from  Capua.  The  Piedmontese  had 
been  sent  to  the  front  to  relieve  Dunn's  Division, 
which  was  worn  out  with  work  and  could  hold  on  no 
longer;  they  will  now  get  a  little  rest  and  refresh 
themselves. 

The  vote  on  the  annexation  is  to  be  taken  in  an 
artful  way:  first,  not  so  secretly  as  to  prevent  public 
opinion  from  weighing  on  the  voters,  and,  secondly, 
by  not  having  an  alternative  between  the  annexation 
and  anarchy.  The  separate  monarchy  men  must 
either  vote  for  the  annexation  or  help  to  keep  on  the 
present  state  of  things,  which  is  insupportable.  Most 
of  the  aristocracy  will  abstain,  I  expect,  but  the 
separatist  bourgeoisie,  which  is  large,  will  vote  for  the 
Unity  to  escape  from  the  present  anarchy. 

October  23. — I  shall  not  have  many  more  letters  to 
send  you  from  Naples,  for  we  are  told  to  expect  the 
new  King  on  Saturday,  though  I  doubt  his  coming 
quite  so  soon,  as  that  inconsiderate  young  man, 
Francis  II.,  seems  bent  on  remaining  at  Gaeta  in  order 
to  vex  and  annoy  his  royal  brother. 

Conceive  my  astonishment  at  receiving  a  telegraphic 
order  to  ask  the  Admiral  for  a  ship  to  take  me  to 
Malta,  and  from  there  to  go  home.  Of  course  it  means 
Marseilles,  but  I  have  telegraphed  back  to  ask  what 
the  deuce  it  does  mean. 

Nothing  could  be  more  quiet  than  the  voting,  but  it 
was  too  unanimous  by  far,  and  proves  too  clearly  how 
great  a  farce  the  whole  thing  was.  There  never  could 
be  even  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  that  the  result  of 
the  vote  would  give  an  enormous  majority  for  Victor 
Emmanuel  and  the  annexation,  and  if  it  was  not  that 
these  people  like  trickery  for  the  sake  of  trickery  (just 
as  they  will  not  tell  the  truth  when  a  lie  will  answer 


102  NAPLES  [i860 

their  purpose)  the  vote  might  have  been  taken  so  as  to 
allow  the  few  friends  of  the  Bourbon  the  power  of 
recording  their  "  No/' 

We  hear  to-day  that  Capua  is  evacuated,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  it  is  true,  for  Cialdini,  with  his  18,000  men, 
was  so  far  advanced  that  communication  with  Gaeta 
must  soon  have  been  cut  off.  He  has  issued  a 
monstrous  order  for  shooting  all  peasants  found  in 
arms  for  King  Francis  II.,  their  legitimate  Sovereign, 
and  he  announces  that  he  had  already  been  doing 
it.  The  Neapolitan  soldiers  committed  all  kinds  of 
atrocities,  but  no  officer  ever  gave  such  an  order  as 
that  of  the  Sardinian  General,  though  I  have  no 
doubt  he  was  provoked  to  it  by  the  excesses  of  the 
peasants. 

October  27. — I  have  very  few  minutes  before  the  boat 
goes,  but  I  must  try  to  keep  a  good  name  to  the  last 
and  send  you  a  line  or  two.  My  last  piece  of  gossip 
about  the  evacuation  of  Capua  turned  out  not  to  be 
true,  and  it  still  holds  out ;  but  it  is  a  fact  that  Victor 
Emmanuel  in  person  led  an  attack  yesterday  by  his 
troops  on  the  Neapolitan  army  on  the  Garigliano, 
between  Capua  and  Gaeta,  and  considerably  crumpled 
them  up,  but  King  Francis  has  still  at  Gaeta  as  many 
men  as  he  knows  what  to  do  with. 

An  order  has  come  to  Persano  to  bombard  it  by  sea 
on  the  29th,  though  there  may  still  be  counter  orders, 
as  there  were  when  it  was  intended  to  blockade  it, 
which  were  given  for  reasons  I  need  not  mention  in  a 
letter  that  goes  by  post. 

I  expect  to  get  away  about  this  day  week,  for  the 
return  of  the  vote  of  the  21st  will  be  sent  in  by 
Tuesday,  and  I  don't  suppose  Victor  Emmanuel  will 
let  many  days  pass  without  accepting  this  pleasant 
little  estate,  which  would  very  soon  run  entirely  to 
ruin  if  the  present  managers  continue  to  direct  it. 
The  disorder  (I  don't  mean  material  disorder)  surpasses 
belief  or  description. 


PILLAGE  103 

Garibaldi,  pure  himself  as  I  believe  him  to  be,  gives 
the  harpies  about  him  carte  blanche  to  pillage  as  they 
please,  and,  as  they  avail  themselves  freely  of  the 
liberty,  a  general  scramble  for  good  things  is  going  on 
such  as  I  do  not  suppose  was  ever  witnessed  in  any 
other  country. 

The  applicants  for  the  governorships  of  provinces, 
of  which  there  are  fifteen,  may  literally  be  numbered 
by  thousands,  and  there  are  above  2,500  who  consider 
they  have  a  right  to  expect  to  be  made  Cabinet 
Ministers. 

Having  been  in  prison  for  any  cause  whatever  during 
the  Bourbon  reign  is  a  claim  considered  irresistible 
by  the  candidates,  and  has  constantly  been  the  only 
qualification  required  in  the  filling  up  of  the  places; 
but  these  gentry  now  come  to  the  Ministers,  and  back 
up  their  demands  by  exhibiting  the  muzzle  of  a  pistol 
to  induce  them  to  acknowledge  their  merits — so  that 
now  the  Minister  of  the  Interior  has  literally  got  a 
guard  of  Piedmontese  soldiers  to  protect  him  from 
the  danger  he  ran  from  these  noble  aspirants  for  public 
service. 

At  the  dockyard  yesterday  the  people  first  struck 
work  and  then  struck  the  chief  man  of  it  with  daggers. 
In  fact,  I  don't  believe  there  is  a  royalist  in  the  town 
who  will  not  welcome  the  arrival  of  Victor  Emmanuel 
as  the  only  way  of  saving  the  country  from  the  mess 
which  would  soon  be  ruin  to  everyone. 

November  3. — We  are  leading  such  an  unsettled  life 
that  I  find  that  I  do  nothing  and  have  time  for 
nothing,  if  you  understand  that  uncomfortable  state; 
and  during  the  last  few  days  there  have  been  various 
small  occurrences  worth  writing  down. 

I  did  not  write  to  you  by  the  messenger  on  the  30th, 
as  we  had  been  taking  a  holiday  the  day  before,  and  so 
let  all  letters  get  into  arrear,  and  I  believe  we  were 
much  better  employed  enjoying  the  beauties  of  Capri 
than  we  could  have  been  elsewhere.    It  is  certainly  a 


104  NAPLES  [i860 

beautiful  island,  and  at  1,100  feet  above  the  sea  the 
thermometer  was  at  67°  in  the  fullest  possible  shade — 
not  bad  for  October  29. 

The  proceedings  of  the  French  Admiral  have  been 
the  great  talk  since  I  last  wrote,  and  more  decided  acts 
of  intervention  could  not  be  imagined.  First  of  all 
Persano,  by  order  of  Farini,  who  is  with  Victor 
Emmanuel,  sent  Bear-Admiral  Albini  to  prepare  to 
bombard  Gaeta,  where  the  Renown  happened  to  be, 
having  been  sent  there  to  see  if  the  King  would  like 
to  have  an  English  ship  to  carry  him  away.  He  took 
with  him  two  frigates  and  three  small  steamers,  one 
of  which  went  into  the  harbour  with  a  flag  of  truce, 
and  a  boat  went  first  to  the  French  flagship  and  then 
to  the  Renown  to  warn  any  French  or  English  subjects 
in  Gaeta  to  take  care  of  themselves.  Thereupon  the 
French  Admiral,  who  had  got  the  steam  up  in  all  his 
four  great  thundering  liners,  announced  that  he  would 
not  permit  any  act  of  hostility,  and  he  sent  out  two 
of  them — cleared  for  action,  ports  up,  small-arm  men 
ready,  etc. — to  place  themselves  between  the  Sardi- 
nians and  the  batteries,  informing  them  at  the 
same  time  in  the  most  uncivil  language  that  if 
they  did  not  clear  out  of  that  he  would  soon  turn 
them  out. 

The  consequence  was  that  the  Sardinians  could  only 
make  their  bow  and  retire ;  but  what  can  possibly  be 
the  object  of  allowing  a  war  to  go  on  by  land  while 
it  is  stopped  by  sea  ?  The  excuse  made  for  it  will 
probably  be  that  Sardinia  has  not  declared  war,  which 
of  course  is  all  stuff  and  nonsense,  though  it  serves 
the  latter  right  for  the  insuperable  repugnance  she 
shows  for  acting  in  a  straightforward  way  and  calling 
things  by  their  right  names,  instead  of  harping  upon 
the  old  nonsense  of  the  abdication  of  the  King  and 
the  revolution  which  has  turned  him  out. 

However,  there  it  is,  act  of  interference  number  one, 
soon  to  be  followed  by  number  two,  which  seems  to 


CAPITULATION  OF  CAPUA  105 

have  been  still  more  uncalled-for,  though  I  have  not 
yet  got  any  official  account  of  it. 

Admiral  Persano  went  down  himself  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Garigliano,  with  his  ships  and  their  boats,  to 
cover  Cialdini's  operations  in  throwing  a  bridge  across 
the  river;  and  we  hear,  through  some  Spanish  officers 
who  have  come  up,  that  Admiral  Le  Barbier  de  Tinan 
would  not  allow  this  purely  military  measure  to  be 
carried  out.  Rumour  says  he  has  received  from  King 
Francis  the  Grand  Cross  of  St.  Januarius,  and  he  has 
surely  earned  it. 

I  take  it  for  granted  that  his  Imperial  master,  and 
those  who  please,  may  believe  that  the  thing  was  done 
upon  the  Admiral's  own  hook,  but  why  the  French 
squadron  of  four  or  five  ships  of  the  line  was  at  Gaeta 
remains  to  be  explained.  The  French  Consul  here  said 
it  was  impossible  for  the  Admiral  to  recognise  a  hostile 
act  by  Garibaldi's  unacknowledged  navy;  but  Albini 
is  a  Sardinian  Admiral,  commanding  Sardinian  ships, 
and  Garibaldi  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  it ;  but 
the  long  and  the  short  of  it  is  that  the  French  cannot 
keep  their  fingers  out  of  any  pie  within  reach  of  them. 

If  a  strong  and  united  Italy  can  be  created  without 
any  compensation  to  France  it  will  be  entirely  Lord 
John's  doing,  and  I  believe  in  Italy  Her  Majesty's 
Government  will  have  the  credit  of  it ;  but  I  cannot  say 
I  feel  easy  on  the  subject  yet,  in  spite  of  all  the  articles 
in  the  Constitutional. 

Capua  capitulated  yesterday,  and  nearly  10,000 
prisoners  have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Sardinians, 
which  is  no  great  prize  for  them.  The  bombardment 
does  not  seem  to  have  done  much  damage,  and  caused 
very  little  loss  of  life.  It  began  the  day  before  yester- 
day at  four  in  the  afternoon,  and  at  daylight  next 
morning  the  place  gave  in.  Garibaldi  was  strongly 
against  the  bombardment,  which,  however,  I  believe 
to  have  been  the  most  humane  way  of  proceeding,  as 
it  brought  the  siege  to  a  quick  end. 


106  NAPLES  [i860 

He  lias  been  in  a  very  bad  humour,  and  will,  I 
expect,  go  back  to  his  island  of  Caprera  as  soon  as 
Victor  Emmanuel  has  made  his  entry.  He  again 
asked  the  King  to  get  rid  of  Farini,*but  His  Majesty 
answered  that,  though  he  hated  both  Farini  and 
Cavour  as  much  as  he  could,  yet  as  constitutional 
Sovereign  he  had  to  keep  the  Ministers  the  country 
demanded,  and  thereupon  the  General  said  he  must 
himself  be  off. 

They  will  keep  up  appearances  a  little  while,  but 
the  Piedmontese  and  their  partisans  are  already 
forgetting  what  they  owe  to  him,  and  now  only  dwell 
upon  the  egregious  faults  and  follies  he  has  been  com- 
mitting from  the  day  of  his  first  arrival  at  Naples. 

November  4. — The  official  declaration  of  the  poll 
took  place  yesterday,  when  it  was  announced  that 
there  were  for  the  annexation  1,302,064  "  si  "  against 
10,312  c  no."  The  population  is,  I  believe,  over 
7,000,000,  so  that  the  vote  is  not  a  large  one. 

The  decree  of  annexation  will  be  issued  in  a  day  or 
two,  and  we  should  have  been  off  if  I  had  not  received 
fresh  instructions  not  to  leave  Naples  as  long  as  the 
King  remains  at  Gaeta — at  least  unless  I  get  other 
orders.  So  here  we  are  as  uncertain  as  ever,  for  though 
closely  hemmed  in  about  Gaeta,  the  place  is  said  to  be 
very  strong,  and  His  Majesty  may  still  hold  out  some 
time.  When  the  Renown  was  sent  down  there  last 
week  to  see  if  the  King  would  like  to  go  away  in  her, 

*  B.  at  Russi  in  the  Province  of  Baverma  in  1812.  Was 
obliged  in  1841  to  leave  Russi  on  account  of  his  Liberal  views,  and 
took  refuge  at  Turin;  returned  to  the  Papal  States  on  the  amnesty 
granted  by  Pope  Pius  IX.  and  held  office  under  Rossi.  Having 
again  to  quit  Rome  he  found  a  refuge  in  Piedmont,  where  he  held 
consecutively  the  posts  of  Minister  of  Public  Instruction, 
Provisional  Governor  of  Modena,  and  Minister  of  Commerce  in 
Cavour's  last  Cabinet.  In  December  1862  he  became  Prime 
Minister,  but  was  compelled  by  ill-health  to  retire  in  the  following 
March,  and  died  in  1866.  The  moderation  of  his  views  caused  him 
to  be  unfavourably  regarded  by  Garibaldi. 


ACTION  OF  FRENCH  ADMIRAL         107 

the  answer  was  that  His  Majesty  was  much  obliged, 
but  had  no  intention  of  leaving  Gaeta  at  present. 

The  "  Excursionists  "  are  going  on  as  badly  as  ever, 
or  rather  worse  and  worse,  and  we  hear  of  nothing  but 
pillage,  mutiny,  and  squabbles. 

November  5. — I  left  a  corner  to  fill  up  with  any  news 
received  by  the  messenger  who  ought  to  have  arrived 
this  morning,  but  the  French  steamers  are  now  made 
to  call  at  Gaeta,  and  therefore  arrive  late.  I  hear  that 
what  took  place  at  the  Garigliano  was  this:  Persano 
arrived  to  cover  Cialdini's  operations;  whereupon  Le 
Barbier  de  Tinan  told  him  he  should  not  allow  any 
hostile  operations,  to  which  Persano  replied:  :  You 
are  the  stronger  of  the  two,  and  may  sink  me  if  you 
please,  but  I  have  received  orders  from  my  King 
which  I  shall  carry  out  at  all  risks."  Bravo,  Persano  ! 
He  then  went  to  work,  and  the  Frenchman  fired  some 
shot  across  him,  but,  after  all  the  bluster,  carried  the 
threat  no  further.  He  is  now  said  to  be  recalled,  but  I 
can't  yet  swear  to  the  correctness  of  this.  Agamemnon 
has  gone  down  to  Palermo  to  relieve  Argus,  forty  men 
having  left  her  {Agn.)  to  take  Garibaldi's  service. 

The  Admiral  will,  I  believe,  give  us  the  Renown  to 
carry  us  off,  when  the  day  comes. 

November  7. — I  have  not  been  able  to  find  an  oppor- 
tunity of  sending  my  letter,  which  contains  too  much 
treason  for  me  to  venture  to  trust  to  the  French  post, 
which  would  probably  play  the  same  trick  that  the 
Roman  one  does,  of  which  I  have  had  recent  ex- 
perience, having  to-day  received  two  letters  from 
Odo  Russell,  dated  respectively  the  10th  and  13th 
of  September. 

From  all  that  I  see  I  am  just  as  likely  to  be  off  myself 
before  the  chance  offers  for  sending  the  letter,  so  I 
may  be  giving  myself  a  great  deal  of  needless  trouble  in 
writing  it;  but  as  all  Naples  except  myself  is  at  this 
moment  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  a  splendid  "Gala 
Theatre "    to   celebrate   the   entry   of   King   Victor 


108  NAPLES  [i860 

Emmanuel,  while  I  cannot  appear  there  to  take  part 
in  the  rejoicings,  what  can  I  do  better  than  sit  down 
and  discharge  my  bile  at  you  who  cannot  escape  from 
it  ?  The  entry  took  place  this  morning,  and  a  poorer 
affair  could  not  be  imagined,  for  the  weather  was 
atrocious,  and,  none  of  the  preparations  being  com- 
plete, the  whole  thing  was  completely  manque,  so  much 
so  that  I  should  not  wonder  if  it  were  to  be  encored, 
as  though  it  had  not  taken  place. 

In  the  course  of  the  day  appeared  Victor  Emmanuel's 
Address  to  the  people  of  Naples  and  Sicily,  accepting 
the  supreme  power  which  had  been  "  conferred  upon 
him  by  the  universal  suffrage  of  those  two  noble 
provinces  " — an  ugly  word  for  them  to  swallow,  and 
which  will  make  many  of  them  wince. 

Lord  John's  despatch  to  Hudson  commenting  upon 
the  disapproval  of  the  other  Powers  of  the  proceedings 
of  Sardinia  is  just  beginning  to  be  known,  and  is  giving 
immense  satisfaction,  and  it  is  no  wonder,  for  a 
heartier  approval  of  Victor  Emmanuel's  Government 
could  hardly  have  been  given;  but,  good  as  I  think 
a  great  part  of  that  despatch,  it  seems  to  me  to  contain 
important  inaccuracies  in  points  of  fact,  which  it  is 
so  important  to  avoid  when  you  show  yourself  ready 
to  break  a  spear  with  all  Europe  upon  a  question  of 
this  sort.  Why  should  it  be  pretended  that  since  1849 
there  had  risen  the  conviction  that  a  single  Govern- 
ment in  Italy  was  necessary  for  its  independence  ? 
As  far  as  Naples  and  Sicily  are  concerned,  the  assertion 
is  entirely  incorrect,  and  any  Neapolitan  you  choose 
to  ask  will  tell  you  that  the  idea  of  annexation  has 
sprung  up  within  the  last  six  months,  before  which 
time  it  absolutely  did  not  exist. 

The  fault,  however,  which  I  chiefly  find  with  the 
despatch  is  that  it  argues  as  if  there  had  been  a 
revolution  in  Naples,  and  as  though  Victor  Emmanuel 
had  been  found  fault  with  for  having  come  to  the 
assistance  of  a  people  struggling  for  their  liberty; 


SARDINIAN  ASSISTANCE  109 

whereas  the  charge  against  him  is  a  very  different  one, 
and  much  more  difficult  to  meet.  It  is  notorious  and 
admitted  (at  least,  Villamarina  admits  it  freely)  that 
the  funds  for  Garibaldi's  expedition  were  furnished  by 
King  Victor  Emmanuel  himself ;  and  nobody  can  deny 
that  every  possible  assistance  was  furnished  by 
Sardinia  to  Garibaldi  from  the  very  first — arms  and 
ammunition  from  their  ships  of  war,  etc.,  etc.;  and  if 
Sardinia  is  to  be  effectively  defended,  we  must  stand  up 
for  her,  not  for  having  come  to  the  assistance  of  a 
revolution,  but  for  having  with  infinite  difficulty 
succeeded  in  creating  the  appearance  of  one. 

After  the  conquest  of  Sicily  it  was  considered  both 
by  Garibaldi  and  the  Sardinian  party  here  that, 
previous  to  any  invasion  of  the  continent,  there  should 
be  some  kind  of  revolutionary  movement  in  Naples 
to  make  it  appear  that  the  foreign  aid  had  been  sent  in 
support  of  a  national  insurrection,  but  although  they 
had  the  certainty  that,  on  the  first  movement,  they 
would  receive  the  immediate  assistance  of  Garibaldi's 
whole  force,  and  although  accredited  Sardinian  agents 
were  pressing  them  to  the  utmost,  Garibaldi  was  kept 
waiting  a  month  at  Messina,  and  found  that  there  was 
not  a  chance  of  a  single  soul  moving ;  and  he  then  came 
over  on  his  own  hook,  when  he  was  no  doubt  wildly 
welcomed  by  the  whole  population,  but  we  have 
no  right  to  talk  of  there  having  been  a  revolution 
here. 

Lord  John  attributes  the  success  of  Garibaldi's 
march  from  Reggio  with  5,000  men  to  the  general 
hatred  of  the  Bourbon  dynasty,  and  I  do  not  believe 
he  can  exaggerate  the  general  detestation  in  which  it 
is  held;  but  there  was  something  more  behind  which 
ensured  the  success  of  the  35,000  (not  5,000)  men,  and 
that  was  the  knowledge  that  they  were  supported  by 
Sardinia. 

The  moderation  of  the  "  Italian  Revolution  "  is  ex- 
plained in  the  same  way.     The  people  did  not  rise  to 


110  NAPLES  [i860 

put  down  the  oppression,  and  they  could  commit  no 
acts  of  excess,  for  they  were  simply  transferred  from 
one  set  of  rulers  to  another,  and,  as  the  royalists  moved 
off  the  stage,  the  Garibaldians  moved  on,  and  their 
chief  was  always  determined  that  his  progress  should 
not  be  accompanied  by  excesses. 

November  13. — I  had  a  long  talk  with  Persano  two 
or  three  days  ago  about  the  French  interference  at 
Gaeta,  the  Garigliano  and  Mola,  and  find  that  it  was 
very  much  as  I  reported;  but  he  added  one  or  two 
things  that  I  was  not  aware  of :  First,  that  it  was  by  the 
pressing  advice  of  Admiral  de  Tinan  that  the  King 
had  been  persuaded  not  to  quit  Gaeta ;  and  secondly, 
that  the  French  men-of-war  steamers  tow  the  Nea- 
politan store-ships,  or  rather  ships  with  supplies  for 
the  Neapolitans,  in  and  out  of  Gaeta. 

The  Emperor  has  written  to  Victor  Emmanuel  to 
say  that  his  Admiral  has  exceeded  his  instructions, 
but  in  spite  of  this  disavowal  we  do  not  hear  either 
that  the  Admiral  is  recalled  or  that  the  Sardinians 
are  to  be  allowed  to  attack  Gaeta  by  sea;  and,  as 
long  as  they  are  prevented  from  doing  so,  it  can 
hardly  be  pretended  that  there  is  no  French  inter- 
ference. 

The  only  effect  likely  to  be  produced  by  it  is  that 
the  French  are  now  in  the  worst  possible  odour,  while 
Lord  John's  despatch  has  raised  the  popularity  of 
England  to  an  immense  height  for  the  moment;  but 
in  these  countries  one  cannot  calculate  upon  any 
feeling  lasting  more  than  a  week,  and  an  inspired 
article  in  the  Constitutional  would  be  enough  to  make 
them  worshippers  of  Napoleon,  if  he  wishes  to  curry 
favour  with  them  again,  as  he  soon  will. 

Garibaldi,  on  his  way  out  of  the  Bay  four  days  ago, 
knocked  up  Admiral  Mundy  about  five  o'clock  in  the 
morning  to  say  good-bye  to  him,  and  to  thank  him, 
England,  Her  Majesty's  Government,  and  above  all 
Lord  John  Russell  for  their  sympathies  for  Italy; 


GARIBALDI  AND  ADMIRAL  MUNDY     111 

and  the  Admiral,  who  knew  nothing  of  Lord  John's 
despatch,  could  not  make  out  why  his  name  had 
been  brought  so  much  forward.  The  same  day  Victor 
Emmanuel  sent  Admiral  Persano  also  to  convey  his 
thanks  to  the  Admiral,  and  summoned  him  to  the 
palace,  where  he  was  very  warm  in  his  expression  of 
gratitude  to  all,  and  especially  to  Lord  John;  but  to 
my  mind  His  Majesty  was  little  short  of  brutal  when 
he  began  to  talk  of  shelling  out  the  Royal  Family  from 
Gaeta.  He  may  have  to  do  it,  but  it  should  scarcely 
be  spoken  of  in  that  manner. 

I  hope  they  may  go  after  the  first  few  shells,  but  it  is 
a  curious  fatality  if  the  new  King  has,  without  being 
at  war,  as  we  are  told,  to  commence  his  reign  over  this 
kingdom  by  bombarding  two  of  its  towns.  It  is  said 
that  the  young  Queen  has  thrown  her  blandishments 
round  Le  Barbier  de  Tinan,  who  is  a  shaky  old 
gentleman,  and  that  this  is  one  of  the  reasons  he 
encourages  them  to  stay. 

We  hope  to  get  off  the  day  after  to-morrow,  and 
that  we  may  keep  the  magnificent  weather  we  now 
have.  Our  hearts  are  very  sore  at  the  thoughts  of 
going,  and  at  this  moment  the  auctioneer  is  selling  our 
horses  under  the  window,  where  poor  Francis's  pony, 
my  own  riding  horse,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  are  going,  going, 
going,  so  that  it  is  time  for  us  to  follow  them. 

Here  ends  my  journal  of  the  last  days  of  the  reign  of 
Francis  II.,  King  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  who  left  behind 
him  no  cause  for  regret  except  that  his  fall  was  not  due 
either  to  the  efforts  of  his  subjects,  who  detested  his 
rule,  or  to  the  open  and  honourable  action  of  an 
avowed  enemy,  but  was  accomplished  through  a 
series  of  treacherous  intrigues,  revolting  to  all 
honourable  minds,  but  conducted  with  a  skill  which 
ensured  a  result  that  every  Neapolitan  must  feel 
grateful  for. 

When  Count  Cavour  gave  his  underhand  assistance 
to  Garibaldi's  expedition  it  was  under  the  belief  and 


112  NAPLES  [i860 

in  the  expectation  that  it  would  suffice  to  induce  the 
discontented  subjects  of  King  Francis  to  rise  in  an 
insurrection  that  might  afford  to  Victor  Emmanuel, 
the  avowed  champion  of  Italian  Liberalism,  a  plausible 
pretext  for  interfering  on  behalf  of  an  Italian  people 
striving  to  obtain  constitutional  freedom;  but  the 
apathy  or  want  of  courage  of  the  populations  falsified 
this  calculation,  as  Cavour  was  at  last  obliged  to 
admit  in  his  letter  to  Persano.  He  said,  however, 
that  things  had  gone  too  far  to  stop  half-way,  and  that 
Garibaldi  should  act  alone  without  waiting  for  the 
insurrection  which  could  not  be  provoked,  and  that  all 
that  remained  was  to  try  that  there  should  be  the 
appearance  of  one  in  the  eyes  of  Europe,  in  which  he 
was  entirely  successful;  for  people  still  talk  of  the 
Neapolitan  Revolution,  while  in  reality  there  never 
was  the  vestige  of  one  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word. 
The  country  was  simply  conquered  by  an  invaded 
force,  welcomed  indeed  by  the  populations,  but  with- 
out receiving  from  them  any  material  assistance. 

On  being  urged  by  Count  Cavour,  Garibaldi  passed 
over  from  Sicily  to  the  mainland,  and  then  began  his 
astonishing  march  from  the  Straits  of  Messina  through 
Calabria  and  the  Basilicata  to  Naples,  the  royal  forces 
simply  melting  away  at  his  approach  and  capitulating 
to  him  when  he  was  miles  ahead  of  his  own  most 
advanced  troops ;  but  with  his  triumphant  entry  into 
Naples  his  part  was  played  out. 

It  was  impossible  to  dissuade  him  from  his  mad 
determination  to  drive  the  French  out  of  Rome  and 
the  Austrians  out  of  Venetia,  and  he  ended  his  extra- 
ordinary enterprise  with  the  humiliation  of  being 
stopped  at  Capua  by  the  remnant  of  King  Francis's 
army,  and  of  being  only  saved  from  utter  destruction 
by  the  timely  intervention  of  the  Piedmontese,  upon 
which  the  Dictator  retired  in  disgust  to  his  island  of 
Caprera,  after  having  accomplished  one  of  the  most 
extraordinary  feats  that  ever  was  performed. 


MR.  ELLIOT  LEAVES  113 

When  I  left  Naples  the  King  was  still  at  Gaeta, 
but  on  his  quitting  his  dominions  the  Legation  was 
abolished,  and  I  remained  unemployed  for  nearly 
three  years,  with  the  exception  of  two  short  special 
missions  to  Greece,  where  another  King  was  expelled 
from  his  throne  by  his  own  subjects  without  foreign 
aid  or  intrigue. 


9 


CHAPTER  V 

GREECE— I.,  1862-1863 

[To  elucidate  the  condition  of  affairs  in  Greece  at  the  time 
when  Mr.  Elliot  entered  on  his  first  Special  Mission  to  that 
country,  it  is  necessary  to  say  a  few  words  respecting  its 
previous  history.  In  the  year  1827  the  National  Assembly 
of  Nauplia  had  proclaimed  the  Greek  patriot  Capodistria 
President  of  the  country  for  seven  years,  but  after  his  assassi- 
nation on  October  9,  1831,  the  confusion  in  Greece  became 
such  that  the  French  troops  then  in  occupation  of  the  Morea 
were  obliged  to  garrison  Nauplia,  Patras  and,  later,  Argos. 
Such  was  the  state  of  Greece  at  the  time  when  Prince  Otho  of 
Bavaria  accepted  the  throne.  By  a  treaty  signed  at  Con- 
stantinople in  July  1832  the  Sultan  agreed  to  recognise  the 
new  Kingdom,  while  England,  France  and  Russia  guaranteed 
a  Greek  loan  of  £2,400,000,  and  negotiated  the  formal  admis- 
sion of  King  Otho  into  the  ranks  of  the  European  sovereigns. 
The  young  Prince,  aged  seventeen,  landed  at  Nauplia  in 
February  1833  and  was  most  favourably  received.  In  1837 
he  married  Princess  Amelia  of  Oldenburg.  The  hopes  enter- 
tained at  his  accession  were,  however,  disappointed;  his  rule 
was  practically  despotic,  and  many  of  the  worst  abuses  of  the 
Turkish  Government,  such  as  the  tithe  system,  were  continued. 
Insecurity  and  brigandage,  resulting  from  the  incapacity 
of  the  King  and  his  Ministers,  were  rife,  the  relations 
between  the  Guaranteeing  Powers  were  frequently  strained, 
and  the  discontent  arising  from  the  misgovernment  of  the 
country  continued  to  grow  until  they  culminated  in  the 
events  related  by  Mr.  Elliot  in  the  following  chapter.] 

In  the  spring  of  1862  I  was  at  home,  having  been 
unemployed  since  my  return  from  Naples,  when  the 
news  was  received  of  the  death  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyse, 
our  Minister  at  Athens;  and  the  Government  at  once 
determined  to  send  me  on  a  special  mission  to  Greece, 
which  was  in  a  most  critical  state,  and  where  there 

114 


STATE  OF  GEEECE  115 

was  only  an  inexperienced  young  attache  in  charge 
of  the  Legation. 

Insurrections  had  broken  out  at  various  parts  of 
the  kingdom,  especially  at  Nauplia,  where  it  had  been 
very  formidable,  and,  although  these  had  been  sup- 
pressed, the  feeling  against  the  Court  was  so  strong 
that  when  a  young  man  belonging  to  a  good  family 
of  the  name  of  Dosios  made  an  attempt  one  day  to 
shoot  the  Queen  as  she  returned  from  riding,  he  was 
much  more  generally  regarded  as  a  patriotic  hero 
than  as  a  dastardly  assassin. 

The  instructions  given  me  for  my  guidance  were 
rather  vague,  but  they  touched  three  special  causes 
of  the  prevailing  discontent — i.e.,  the  want  of  such 
reforms  as  should  ensure  the  observance  of  constitu- 
tional government,  the  dissatisfaction  with  the  narrow 
limits  of  the  kingdom,  and  the  unsettled  state  of  the 
succession  to  the  throne;  and  I  was  to  make  it  clear 
that  Her  Majesty's  Government  were  determined  to 
adhere  firmly  to  all  their  engagements,  whether  to 
Greece  or  to  Turkey. 

Otho  had  been  twenty-nine  years  on  the  throne,  and 
during  that  long  period  had  done  literally  nothing  to 
develop  the  resources  of  his  kingdom  or  to  promote 
the  prosperity  of  his  people.  Not  ten  miles  of  road 
beyond  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  Athens  had 
been  made  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  country;  industrial  enterprises  were  discouraged 
by  means  of  lavish  corruption  and  by  intimidation, 
the  Elective  Chamber  had  been  degraded  till  it  was 
nothing  but  an  assembly  of  Court  nominees ;  arbitrary 
arrests  and  imprisonment  were  freely  resorted  to 
against  those  who  gave  offence  to  the  Government; 
brigandage,  which  was  rife  everywhere,  was  especially 
countenanced  on  the  Turkish  frontier,  where  many 
of  the  chiefs  were  in  the  actual  pay  of  the  Court, 
which  was  unremitting  in  its  endeavours  to  divert 
the  attention  of  the  people  from  their  own  grievances 


116  GREECE  [1862 

by  encouraging  them  to  make  incursions  into  the 
Turkish  provinces. 

It  was  to  be  my  business  to  make  King  Otho  under- 
stand that  Her  Majesty's  Government  would  not 
countenance  such  proceedings,  and  also,  if  possible, 
to  get  him  to  see  that,  if  he  did  not  satisfy  the  just 
demand  of  his  people  for  a  total  change  of  the  system 
of  government  by  a  fair  observance  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, he  would  not  long  be  able  to  maintain  himself 
on  his  throne.  My  task  would,  therefore,  be  not 
unlike  what  it  was  at  Naples,  and  the  probability  was 
that  I  should  not  now  be  more  listened  to  than  I  was 
then,  and  that  the  result  would  be  the  same. 

Before  leaving  London  I  saw  Baron  Brunnow,  the 
Russian  Ambassador,  who  read  me  part  of  a  letter 
from  Prince  Gortchakoff  upon  the  state  of  Greece, 
in  which  he  observed  that  the  present  insurrection 
must  leave  the  King  even  weaker  than  he  was  before, 
and  that  His  Majesty,  being  a  constitutional  King, 
ought  to  understand  that  he  should  fulfil  the  obliga- 
tions this  imposed  upon  him. 

The  letter  touched  upon  the  question  of  the  suc- 
cession, and  said  that  it  was  impossible  to  expect  a 
nation  to  sit  down  contentedly  in  perfect  ignorance  as 
to  who  their  next  Sovereign  might  be. 

Baron  Brunnow  dwelt  upon  the  harmony  prevailing 
between  England  and  Russia  with  respect  to  Greece, 
observing  that  the  hostility  of  the  Emperor  Nicholas 
to  everything  like  constitutional  government  which 
had  formerly  been  the  cause  of  divergence  was,  under 
the  Emperor  Alexander,  now  happily  at  an  end.  The 
remembrance  that  the  Greek  Constitution  had  laid  it 
down  that  the  next  King  must  belong  to  the  National 
Church  had  probably  a  good  deal  to  do  with  this 
new-born  affection  of  Prince  GortchakofT  and  Baron 
Brunnow  for  constitutional  government,  as  the  Duke 
of  Leuchtenberg,  the  Czar's  nephew,  who  had  this 
qualification,   would  in   their   estimation   make   an 


M.  DE  THOUVENEL'S  VIEWS  117 

eligible  candidate  for  the  succession  to  the  throne  if 
the  Bavarians  were  out  of  the  way. 

At  Paris  I  saw  M.  de  Thouvenel,  the  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  who,  having  long  been  French  Minister 
at  Athens,  took  much  interest  in  the  country.  He 
did  not  greatly  believe  in  the  discontent  said  to  be 
caused  by  a  desire  for  internal  reform,  although  he 
admitted  that  some  had  been  produced  by  the  inter- 
ference of  the  Government  in  the  elections,  and  by 
the  arbitrary  suppression  of  most  of  the  local  and 
provincial  institutions.  The  two  subjects  of  real 
interest  were,  he  said,  the  question  of  the  succession 
and  the  impatience  of  the  people  at  their  territorial 
limits.  He  did  not  believe  that  the  sensible  and  think- 
ing men  were  desirous  of  an  aggressive  movement 
upon  Turkey;  for,  although  there  was  not  a  Greek 
who  had  not  absolute  faith  in  the  re-establishment  of  a 
Greek  Empire,  on  the  ruins  of  the  Turk,  at  some  future 
period,  he  did  not  consider  that  it  need  cause  any 
present  anxiety. 

The  question  of  the  succession,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  one  about  which  the  Greek  nation  had  become 
impatient,  and  it  called  for  immediate  attention. 
He  was  convinced  that  any  Prince  who,  after  arriving 
at  years  of  maturity,  changed  his  religion  for  the  sake 
of  mounting  the  throne  would  by  that  very  act  for 
ever  forfeit  the  respect  of  his  future  subjects;  and 
he  was  sure  that  the  Greeks  would  again  accept  a 
Sovereign  of  another  religion  if  they  were  assured  of 
his  children  being  brought  up  as  Greeks;  but  he  did 
not  know  how  to  overcome  the  stiffness  of  Russia 
for  a  rigid  adherence  to  the  clause  in  the  Constitution 
relative  to  the  religion  of  the  next  King. 

De  Thouvenel  did  not  seem  to  remember  that  people 
do  not  usually  feel  any  very  prolonged  contempt  for 
those  who,  even  from  interested  motives,  change  to 
their  own  views,  however  much  they  might  resent  a 
change  from  them,  and  that  therefore  the  Greeks 


118  GREECE  [1862 

would  probably  be  much  more  flattered  than  irritated 
by  a  Prince  adopting  their  religion  on  their  account. 

His  mention  of  the  stiffness  of  Russia  on  this 
question  showed  that  it  had  been  discussed  by  the 
two  Governments,  and,  as  it  was  certain  that  France 
took  no  deep  interest  in  the  Bavarians,  it  provoked 
a  suspicion  that  Thouvenel  had  in  his  eye  some  other 
candidate  of  more  French  proclivities. 

At  Vienna,  where  I  saw  Count  Rechberg,  the 
Austrian  Prime  Minister,  I  perceived  that  he  enter- 
tained the  same  suspicion,  and  also  that  he  looked 
upon  the  candidature  of  the  Duke  of  Leuchtenberg 
for  the  succession  as  both  imminent  and  alarming. 

M.  Schrenck,  the  Bavarian  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs,  whom  T  saw  at  Munich,  took  the  matter  very 
easily,  not  seeming  to  think  it  necessary  for  us  to 
trouble  ourselves  about  it,  as  he  considered  that  the 
succession  was  so  irrevocably  settled  on  the  Bavarian 
dynasty  that  it  could  not  be  disturbed. 

The  Greeks,  he  said,  should  remain  satisfied  with 
knowing  that  whenever  the  throne  became  vacant  a 
Prince  would  be  found  ready  to  mount  it,  but  it  could 
hardly  be  expected  that  a  Bavarian  Prince  should 
change  his  religion  without  the  absolute  certainty  of 
receiving  the  reward  of  his  apostacy.  Suppose  the 
Queen  of  Greece  were  to  die,  and  then  supposing  that, 
however  improbable,  the  King,  having  married  again, 
were  to  have  a  direct  heir,  in  what  position  it  would 
place  the  unfortunate  Bavarian  Prince,  who  might 
have  to  remain  at  Munich,  saddled  with  his  Greek 
religion,  adopted  in  the  full  expectation  of  his 
becoming  King  of  the  Hellenes. 

It  was  a  difficult  question  to  deal  with,  and  was 
made  the  more  so  by  the  indifference  shown  to  it  by 
King  Otho  and  the  Bavarian  Government,  who  were 
satisfied  with  believing  that,  whenever  the  time  came, 
the  arrangement  made  on  Otho's  accession  would  be 
enforced  by  the  three  Protecting  Powers.    But  though 


ARRIVAL  AT  ATHENS  119 

one  of  the  arrangements  was  that,  failing  Otho's  male 
issue,  the  Crown  should  go  to  one  of  his  brothers  or 
his  descendants,  a  clause  in  the  Greek  Constitution, 
also  recognised  by  the  Powers,  required  that  the  suc- 
cessor should  belong  to  the  Greek  Church,  to  which 
none  of  the  Bavarian  Princes  had  shown  a  disposition 
to  conform,  and  to  this  clause  the  Russian  Govern- 
ment attached  more  importance  than  to  the  main- 
tenance of  the  Bavarian  dynasty. 

As  the  Protecting  Powers  had  long  tolerated  an 
habitual  disregard  of  other  provisions  of  the  Consti- 
tution, there  seemed  to  be  no  imperative  reason  why 
they  should  insist  upon  the  observance  of  this  one  if 
the  Greeks  themselves  were  willing  to  modify  it. 

We  arrived  at  Athens  on  the  12th  of  May,  1862, 
and  my  letters,  from  which  I  copy  extracts,  give  a 
description  of  the  state  of  things  that  I  found  there: 

Athens,  May  13. — I  was  astonished  to  find  at  Corfu 
that  a  belief  in  an  English  Prince  as  the  future  King 
of  Greece  had  for  some  time  past  been  commonly 
accepted. 

It  seems  that  the  Ionians  delight  in  the  idea,  sup- 
posing that  it  would  bring  the  immediate  annexation 
of  the  islands  to  Greece.  The  most  amusing  part  of 
it  was  that  the  Greek  Consul-General,  a  certain  Vitalis, 
came  to  me  to  argue  in  favour  of  the  scheme,  which 
he  took  up  with  such  eagerness  that  it  was  all  I 
could  do  to  prevent  him  from  undertaking  that  his 
King  should  be  shaken  out  of  his  rickety  throne  to 
make  room  for  Prince  Alfred. 

I  was  told  there  that  the  Russian  influence  had 
greatly  declined  in  Greece,  and  that  except  the 
fanatical  party  there  are  not  now  many  who  expect 
much  from  that  quarter.  The  publication  of  Sir 
Hamilton  Seymour's  secret  despatches,  from  which 
they  perceived  the  determination  of  Russia  never  to 
permit  the  reconstruction  of  a  powerful  Greek  Empire, 
worked  an  entire  change  among  the  Greeks,  who  to 


120  GREECE  [1862 

a  man  look  to  the  re-establishment  of  the  Empire  as 
simply  a  question  of  time. 

I  had  heard  much  of  the  hopelessness  of  trying  to 
seat  Otho  firmly  on  his  throne  by  inducing  him  to 
make  internal  reforms,  but  till  I  got  here  I  had  no 
notion  of  the  extent  of  his  unpopularity  or  of  the 
contempt  that  is  felt  for  him.  In  1854  and  during 
the  Crimean  War  he  was  extremely  popular,  merely 
because  it  was  believed  that  he  was  preparing  for 
active  aggression  upon  Turkey,  but  since  that  idea  has 
been  abandoned  he  has  sunk  to  the  lowest  stage  of 
contempt  in  the  eyes  of  his  subjects.  The  succession 
question,  again,  puts  him  in  a  cleft  stick,  and  my 
instructions  are  not  quite  fair  to  him  in  this  matter, 
when  they  say  that  it  depends  entirely  upon  him  to 
render  the  succession  easy.  What  is  eas}r  to  one  man 
is  by  no  means  so  to  another,  and,  though  many 
people  find  no  great  difficulty  in  producing  a  son  to 
succeed  them,  His  Majesty  has  found  the  task  a  simple 
impossibility;  and  failing  that  natural  solution  it  is 
not  so  plain  how  an  heir  is  to  be  got,  as  long  as  the 
Bavarian  Princes  choose  to  go  on  under  the  comfort- 
able conviction  that  it  would  not  suit  the  Great  Powers 
to  allow  the  succession  to  be  altered,  and  that  therefore 
they  need  not  trouble  themselves  about  the  matter. 

As  far  as  I  can  yet  form  an  opinion,  the  feeling  of  the 
country  appears  to  be  so  unanimous  and  so  strong 
against  the  Bavarians  that,  if  the  throne  were  vacant 
to-morrow,  I  believe  that  nothing  short  of  absolute 
force  on  the  part  of  the  Allies  would  suffice  to  secure 
it  to  one  of  those  Princes. 

The  best  arrangement  that  could  be  made  at  present 
as  far  as  I  can  see,  is  that  the  youngest,  instead  of  the 
eldest,  of  the  sons  of  King  Luitpold  should  be  looked 
upon  as  the  future  King  of  Greece,  and  that  he  should 
be  at  once  sent  here  to  live  with  King  Otho,  and 
be  brought  up  in  the  Greek  religion  and  to  take  the 
position  of  the  heir-presumptive. 


NO  MINISTRY  121 

However,  Bouree,  the  French  Minister  here,  and 
de  Thouvenel  at  Paris  and  other  people,  agree  in  declar- 
ing that  the  only  thing  that  carries  Otho  through  is 
the  absence  of  anyone  to  put  in  his  place.  They  say 
that,  if  there  was  a  man  here  to  whom  the  public 
could  look  with  the  slightest  degree  of  hope,  you 
could  not  guarantee  the  King  six  months  of  reign. 
At  this  particular  moment  things  are  in  a  queer 
state:  the  Ministers  resigned  about  ten  days  ago, 
and  not  a  step  has  been  taken  towards  getting  new 
ones. 

May  20. — I  forget  whether  you  have  ever  been  here 
in  the  course  of  your  wanderings.  It  is  a  place  to 
visit,  but  not  to  live  in  if  one  can  help  it.  In  fact, 
to  enjoy  oneself  at  Athens  one  ought  to  be  on  such 
familiar  terms  with  all  the  old  gentlemen  and  ladies, 
gods  and  goddesses,  satyrs  and  nymphs  who  lived 
two  thousand  years  ago  as  to  make  one  quite  contented 
with  them  without  troubling  oneself  about  their 
descendants.  Unfortunately,  I  have  not  kept  up  a 
sufficient  acquaintance  with  these  respectable  persons 
to  make  me  feel  quite  at  home  among  them  now  that 
I  am  thrown  into  their  society,  and  so  I  lose  much 
of  the  pleasure  and  advantage  of  this  chance  visit. 
The  moderns  are  unsatisfactory  enough,  one  and  all 
dreaming  all  day  and  all  night  of  devouring  great 
slices  of  Turkey,  and  forgetting  that  Bubbly  Jock 
is  still  a  good  deal  stronger  than  his  would-be 
consumer. 

May  22. — I  have  been  idle  about  writing,  but  I 
should  have  had  nothing  to  record  except  the  sayings 
of  my  various  colleagues.  Bouree,  the  Frenchman, 
and  Bludoff,  the  Russian,  seem  the  two  best.  Pho- 
tiades  Bey,*  the  Turkish  Minister,  keeps  his  eyes  very 

*  Afterward  Pasha.  A  well-known  Turkish  diplomatist  who 
for  many  years  represented  the  Porte  at  Athens.  A  Greek  Chris- 
tian by  birth,  but  an  Ottoman  subject,  he  served  the  Porte 
honestly  and  well.  He  was  brother-in-law  to  Musurus  Pasha,  who 
was  for  so  long  Turkish  Ambassador  in  London. 


122  GREECE  [is62 

open  to  all  the  intriguing  that  is  going  on  in  the  neigh- 
bouring provinces,  but  he  is  a  Greek  himself,  and 
has  all  kinds  of  secret  agents  to  get  him  information, 
to  which  he  seems  to  attach  more  credit  than  I  should 
be  disposed  to  do:  a  spy  is  exactly  the  last  person 
whose  information  I  should  trust. 

A  few  days  ago  I  dined  at  the  Palace  and  sat  next 
the  Queen,  who  is  a  gossiping  sort  of  a  woman  and 
agreeable  in  that  way.  As  I  could  not  get  hold  of  the 
King,  I  thought  I  would  pin  her  a  little,  and  got  upon 
the  subject  of  the  succession,  which  they  fancied  I 
had  been  sent  here  to  agitate :  I  told  her  that  this  was 
exactly  contrary  to  the  fact,  as  my  Government  wished 
it  to  remain  as  it  had  been  settled,  only  that  we 
thought  it  unfortunate  that  nothing  was  done  to 
facilitate  it.  She  professed  to  regret  very  much  that 
the  visit  of  the  two  Bavarian  Princes  had  been  in- 
terrupted by  the  outbreak  at  Nauplia,  though  every- 
one believes  that  she  was  delighted  to  have  an  excuse 
for  turning  them  back.  One  cannot  pretend  to  say 
that  her  aversion  to  have  the  heir  in  Athens  is  quite 
without  sense,  for  at  least  two  people  out  of  three 
will  tell  you  that  nothing  keeps  Otho  on  his  throne  but 
the  fact  of  there  being  no  one  at  hand  to  take  his  place. 

She  alluded  to  the  difficulty  of  getting  a  grown- 
up man  to  change  his  religion,  and  said  that  both  the 
King  and  herself  were  most  anxious  to  have  a  child 
to  bring  up  as  the  future  Sovereign. 

The  Bavarian  Minister  is  detestable  on  this  matter, 
and  scouts  the  idea  of  a  child  being  sent  to  be  bred  up 
as  heir,  and,  in  his  inward  heart,  I  am  sure  that  he 
thinks  the  Three  Powers  will  stuff  the  Bavarian  Prince 
down  the  throats  of  the  Greeks  whether  he  adopts 
the  Orthodox  religion  or  not.  If  they,  the  Greeks, 
could  get  a  Prince  to  their  taste,  they  might  consent 
to  forego  the  clause  in  the  Constitution  about  the 
religion  of  the  next  King,  but  assuredly  they  will 
never  give  way  for  the  sake  of  a  Bavarian. 


LYCABETTUS  LEPER  123 

Last  night  we  dined  at  Bouree's,  who  had  a  party  in 
the  evening,  when  we  had  a  first  view  of  the  Athenian 
beauties.    There  were  certainly  some  very  pretty  girls. 

May  25. — A  delicious  breeze,  no  Greek  Ministers  to 
call  on,  and  no  visits  from  colleagues,  have  combined 
to  make  this  a  thoroughly  enjoyable  day— quite  the 
first  of  the  kind  I  have  had.  I  could  not  resist  strolling 
towards  Lycabettus,  which  lies  close  to  the  town  on 
the  north  or  north-east,  rising  out  of  the  plain  in  a  fine 
bold  rocky  outline  considerably  higher  than  the 
Acropolis  on  the  other  side.  As  I  got  to  the  begin- 
ning of  the  rise  I  found  it  gave  views  of  the  town  and 
of  the  Acropolis  that  were  quite  new  to  me,  and  from 
some  points  wonderfully  striking,  so  there  was  nothing 
for  it  but  to  try  to  clamber  to  the  top,  which  is  nothing 
at  all  of  a  business  except  that  it  is  warm  work.  There 
is  a  little  chapel  at  the  top,  and  I  had  been  told  that  a 
leper  takes  up  his  abode  there,  and  amuses  himself 
by  throwing  stones  down  on  the  heads  of  the  people 
who  don't  give  him  money,  so  I  had  taken  the  pre- 
caution of  putting  some  coppers  into  my  pocket  for 
his  particular  benefit;  whether  moved  thereto  by 
charity  or  by  a  wish  to  save  my  own  cranium  is  a 
question  that  need  not  be  decided.  At  about  twenty 
or  thirty  yards  from  the  top  I  turned  round  to  gaze 
at  the  view  one  can  never  get  tired  of,  looking  over  the 
Acropolis  and  iEgina  rising  high  out  of  the  beautiful 
blue  sea,  and  over  Salamis  at  the  distant  high  moun- 
tains of  the  Peloponnesus,  and  to  the  left  at  Hymettus 
rn nning  down  to  little  low  islands,  but  unfortunately 
corning  too  far  forward  to  allow  one  to  see  Cape 
Sunium. 

Whilst  I  was  enjoying  myself  to  my  heart's  content 
I  discovered  that  my  position  was  causing  the  greatest 
agitation  to  two  white-petticoated  individuals  near 
the  foot  of  the  hill,  which  they  were  breasting  at  a 
speed  likely  to  break  their  wind,  and  shouting  to  me 
at  the  same  time.    Not  knowing  whether  this  might 


124  GREECE  [1862 

not  be  the  ferocious  leper,  who  like  the  giant  in 
"  Jack  the  Giantkiller  "  had  got  a  companion  ten  times 
worse  than  himself,  I  took  a  good  look  through  my 
glasses,  which  satisfied  me  that  their  skin  was  in  quite 
a  wholesome  state,  and  that  one  had  a  formidable 
Turkish  sword,  and  the  other  some  sort  of  instrument 
of  offence  which  I  could  not  quite  make  out.  Ten 
miles  away  from  Athens  they  might  have  been 
brigands,  and  I  began  to  think  how  curious  it  would 
be  to  be  carried  to  the  mountains  and  to  have  to 
enter  "  ransom  "  as  one  of  the  items  in  the  account  of 
the  special  mission  to  be  charged  against  Her 
Majesty's  Government. 

By  shouting  and  gesticulating  they  made  me  under- 
stand that  they  wanted  me  to  come  down,  which, 
as  I  saw  that  they  were  people  in  authority,  I  began  to 
do,  and  soon  reached  them,  when  we  had  a  lively 
though  quite  friendly  conversation,  neither  party 
understanding  a  single  word,  though  I  saw  that  I 
had  been  guilty  of  some  great  indiscretion  or  breach 
of  decorum ;  and  we  proceeded  amicably  down  the  hill 
together  till  we  came  to  a  track  leading  to  another 
point,  where  I  thought  I  would  go,  as  I  had  been 
cheated  of  my  first  attempt.  So  I  managed  to  make 
my  two  friends  understand  that  I  would  go  that  way; 
but  I  soon  found  that  this  did  not  square  with  their 
notions,  and  they  made  me  understand  that  I  must 
accompany  them  to  a  building  which  they  pointed  out 
at  the  edge  of  the  town,  and  which  I  instinctively 
guessed  to  be  the  police-station;  and,  as  if  to  leave  no 
doubt  on  the  matter,  one  got  in  front  and  the  other 
behind,  and  so,  to  my  immense  amusement,  we  con- 
tinued the  descent,  I  being  manifestly  taken  into 
custody  on  the  very  first  walk  I  had  attempted  at 
Athens. 

When  we  got  to  the  police-house  there  were  four 
other  men  there,  and  we  had  some  splendid  pantomime, 
with  the  best  possible  humour  on  both  sides,  and  so 


QUEEN'S  ROADS  125 

well  acted  on  theirs  at  least  that  I  understood  them  to 
say  that,  if  they  had  not  rushed  up  the  hill  I  should 
have  got  into  a  frightful  scrape  with  the  old  man  of 
the  mountain  at  the  top;  that  he  would  have  robbed 
me  and  stripped  me  and  then  rolled  down  pieces  of 
rock  which  would  infallibly  have  crushed  me  as  flat 
as  a  pancake.  On  my  part  I  made  them  understand 
that  I  was  an  extremely  great  man,  and  nothing  could 
surpass  their  civility,  which  indeed  they  carried  to  an 
inconvenient  pitch,  for  the  chief  man  ordered  one  of 
them  out  to  convoy  me  safely  to  the  top  and  protect 
me  from  the  enemy.  As  I  had  been  within  twenty 
yards  of  the  top  already,  I  had  no  sort  of  wish  to  face 
the  hot  hill-side  again,  and  intimated  as  much.  Not 
at  all.  I  was  assured  there  was  no  danger;  my  guide 
was  pointed  to  with  pride  to  show  that  he  would 
single-handed  have  withstood  the  whole  force  at 
Thermopylae,  and  unless  I  was  content  to  be  branded 
as  a  coward  up  I  must  go  again  whether  I  liked  it 
or  not.  The  whole  thing  was  thoroughly  good  fun, 
except  this  last  climb,  which  carried  the  joke  a  little 
too  far. 

Drove  to  what  is  called  the  Queen's  Farm,  about 
three  miles  beyond  Patissia.  The  Queen  has  done  a 
great  deal  in  the  way  of  making  roads  and  improve- 
ments immediately  round  Athens,  but  the  progress 
does  not  extend  beyond  the  range  of  Her  Majesty's 
rides. 

The  number  of  roads  in  various  directions  is  con- 
siderable: they  have  trees  planted  on  each  side,  and 
some  of  them  have  fringes  of  oleander,  at  present  in 
full  bloom,  but  none  of  these  roads  go  far  enough  into 
the  country  to  do  any  good.  They  were  made  solely 
for  the  Queen's  enjoyment.  It  is  curious  enough 
that,  in  all  these  things,  one  never  hears  anything 
of  the  King.  It  is  always  the  Queen  who  does  every- 
thing. The  Palace  Gardens  are  the  '  Queen's 
Gardens,"  the  farm  is  the  "  Queen's  Farm,"  the  model 


126  GREECE  [1862 

village  near  it  is  the  "  Queen's  Village/'  the  roads 
are  the  "  Queen's  roads,"  the  trees  in  the  streets  of 
Athens  are  planted  by  '  the  Queen."  With  all 
this,  he  [the  King]  is  not  spoken  of  as  an  imbecile : 
he  is  very  slow  in  making  up  his  mind  and  dull  of  com- 
prehension, making  him  very  unlike  the  people  he  has 
to  reign  over,  though  one  of  themselves  gives  him 
credit  for  having  on  his  arrival  at  once  discovered 
that  they  were  all  mercenary  and  corruptible,  and  for 
having  steadily  acted  upon  his  discovery. 

A  goodish  story  is  told  to  show  how  at  once  the 
Greeks  began  to  poke  their  fun  at  him  and  his  Ba- 
varians. Soon  after  his  arrival  he  made  an  excursion 
to  Thebes,  about  which  one  of  his  Bavarian  suite,  being 
rather  ignorant,  tried  in  a  laudable  manner  to  pick  up 
as  much  information  as  he  could,  which  he  carried 
back  to  his  royal  master.  "  Sire,  do  you  know  that 
this  Thebes  is  a  very  famous  place,  the  capital  of 
Boeotia,  the  country  of  Epaminondas  and  Plutarch  ? 
And  do  you  know,  sire,  they  say  that  we  Bavarians 
are  the  Boeotians  of  Germany  ?"  His  Majesty  is  sup- 
posed to  have  thought  the  compliment  very  prettily 
turned. 

I  have  had  a  good  deal  of  talk  with  Mavrocordato, 
who  is  now  quite  blind,  though  his  intellect  is  clear. 
His  distrust  of  the  King  is  complete,  and  he  does  not 
believe  that  the  proposed  reform  of  the  Electoral  Law 
will  have  any  practical  effect :  he  says  that  the  Elec- 
toral lists  were  full  of  the  names  of  children  in  the 
cradle  and  of  men  who  had  been  years  in  their  graves, 
and  when  I  asked  Coundourioti  whether  this  was 
true,  he  said  there  could  be  no  doubt  of  it,  and  that 
the  elections  had  been  a  mere  farce — a  very  pretty 
admission  for  one  of  the  King's  Ministers  whose 
official  existence  had  only  been  kept  up  by  a  Chamber 
so  chosen. 

May  26. — About  five  days  ago  I  had  it  conveyed  to 
the  King  that  I  was  at  His  Majesty's  orders  if  he  chose 


AUDIENCE  OP  KING  OTHO  127 

to  send  for  me,  and  that  if  lie  did  not  I  should  ask  for 
an  audience.  As  I  have  received  no  invitation  from 
the  King  to  wait  upon  him,  I  have  told  Coundourioti 
that  I  want  to  have  an  audience,  as  it  is  high  time  that 
I  saw  His  Majesty.  He  evidently  did  not  like  this 
at  all,  but  said  he  would  take  his  master's  orders. 
He  repeated  what  he  had  already  told  me  four  or 
five  times,  that  the  new  Ministry  was  on  the  point 
of  being  formed;  but  I  will  not  wait  any  longer 
without  at  least  trying  to  have  my  say  out  with  the 
King. 

People  differ  much  as  to  what  he  is  likely  to  do : 
some,  and  among  them  old  Tricoupi,  formerly  Greek 
Minister  in  London,  think  he  really  means  to  try  the 
constitutional  line,  but  many  others  say  that  it  is  all 
sham.  The  thing  for  us  to  do  is  to  try  to  get  him — 
whether  he  is  true  or  not — so  far  on  the  road  that  it 
will  be  difficult  for  him  to  turn  back. 

May  29. — In  consequence  of  my  application  I 
received  an  intimation  to  be  at  the  Palace  yester- 
day afternoon,  when  the  King  received  me  in 
private  audience — that  is  to  say,  in  the  presence 
of  Coundourioti. 

I  found  His  Majesty  standing  in  the  centre  of  a  large 
room  in  an  attitude  of  attention,  and  it  became 
evident  that,  instead  of  talking  things  over,  it  was 
expected  that  I  should  make  a  sort  of  harangue;  so  off 
I  set  at  the  top  of  my  voice,*  and  was  rather  well 
pleased  with  myself  for  the  number  of  disagreeable 
things  I  was  able  to  say. 

There  is  nothing  more  difficult  than  to  pitch  into  a 
person  who  shows  no  fight.  If  one  starts  by  intimating 
in  courtly  language,  "  Sire,  you  are  a  muff,"  and  is 
stoutly  contradicted,  there  is  no  difficulty  in  bringing 
forward  the  evidence  to  prove  one's  assertion;  but  if 
you  begin  with  "  Sire,  you  are  a  muff,"  and  receive 
nothing  but  a  low  bow  in  return,  it  is  not  easy  to  carry 

*  King  Otho  was  exceedingly  deaf. 


128  GREECE  [1862 

on  the  attack  with  any  decency  and  propriety,  and 
I  had  some  of  this  difficulty  yesterday. 

However,  I  did  manage  to  explain  that  Her  Majesty's 
Government  considered  that  Greece  was  in  a  very 
critical  state,  and  that  they  believed  one  great  reason 
was  the  contempt  shown  for  the  Constitution,  and  I 
pointed  out  to  the  King  how  desirable  it  was  that  the 
unpopularity,  which  now  falls  directly  on  his  own 
royal  shoulders,  should  be  transferred  to  those  of  his 
Ministers,  as  would  be  the  case  if  he  were  known 
to  be  really  governing  through  them  in  a  constitu- 
tional way. 

I  spoke  of  the  contempt  into  which  the  Chamber  had 
fallen  by  the  exercise  of  the  Government  influence  at 
the  elections,  which  he  admitted;  and  though  he 
denied  that  it  was  against  the  Constitution,  said  that 
he  had  been  so  completely  misunderstood  that  he  had 
quite  made  up  his  mind  that  the  elections  shall  hence- 
forth be  absolutely  free,  and  that  not  the  slightest 
influence  shall  be  exercised  by  the  Government. 

He  said,  however — and  I  believe  truly — that  the 
present  Electoral  Law  places  an  immense  deal  of 
power  in  the  hands  of  the  mayors,  and  that,  till  this 
is  restricted,  the  freedom  of  election  cannot  be  con- 
sidered as  secured;  for  which  reason  he  wants  now  to 
pass  such  a  law  before  the  dissolution. 

As  far  as  words  can  go,  therefore,  he  is  pledged  to 
have  a  new  Chamber  freely  elected,  and  this  will  be 
no  small  step,  if  it  can  be  obtained. 

In  answer  to  what  I  said  about  the  danger  of 
aggression  upon  Turkey,  he,  of  course,  said  that  much 
of  his  unpopularity  was  caused  by  the  reproach  that 
he  did  not  encourage  the  "Grande  Idee."  As  I  knew 
this  to  be  true,  I  did  not  contradict  it,  but  launched 
into  a  pretty  flight  of  fancy  upon  the  way  in  which  he 
might  legitimately  damage  Turkey  by  showing  such 
an  example  of  good  government,  and  by  developing 
the  resources  of  the  country,  that  the  Christians  in 


PISTOL  SHOT  AT  FETE  129 

Turkey  could  not  but  compare  the  rule  of  their 
Mahometan  masters  with  the  enlightened  adminis- 
tration of  Christian  Greece. 

On  the  succession  question  he  said  that  great 
difficulty  was  caused  by  a  clause  in  the  marriage 
settlements  of  Prince  Luitpold,  under  which  all  the 
children  were  to  be  brought  up  in  the  Catholic 
Church. 

To-day  being  Ascension  day  was  a  great  popular 
fete,  and  all  the  world,  including  the  King  and  Queen, 
promenaded  on  the  Pentelicus  road.  While  standing 
looking  about  us,  a  pistol  shot  was  fired  by  an  in- 
dividual nearly  touching  our  carriage,  and  I  saw  the 
man  who  fired  it  running  away  as  hard  as  he  could; 
but  no  one  tried  to  stop  him,  and  why  should  they 
for  he  had  only  shot  another  man  in  the  belly.  It  will 
probably  be  magnified  into  another  attempt  on  the 
King  or  Queen,  who  were  fully  two  hundred  yards  off. 

It  is  three  weeks  to-day  since  I  arrived  here,  and, 
though  the  Ministers  had  then  already  resigned  a  week, 
nothing  has  yet  been  done  in  forming  an  Adminis- 
tration. 

It  is  not  wonderful  that  the  King's  position  should  be 
getting  worse  and  worse,  and,  though  no  one  seems  to 
expect  an  immediate  catastrophe,  I  should  think  that 
he  must  inevitably  come  to  grief  unless  he  turns  over 
an  entirely  new  leaf  without  more  loss  of  time. 

Even  the  people  least  likely  to  be  of  that  way  of 
thinking  are  now  speaking  constitutionalism;  at  least, 
they  talk  it  to  me,  and,  amongst  others,  Wendlandt, 
the  King's  private  secretary,  who  has  always  been 
supposed  to  be  of  the  other  faction,  told  me  the  other 
day  that  he  was  convinced  nothing  could  save  the 
King  but  a  frank  adoption  of  Constitutional  Govern- 
ment; that  what  His  Majesty  had  hitherto  done  had 
been  meant  for  the  best;  but  that  it  was  now  evident 
that  freely  elected  Chambers  and  a  Ministry  enjoying 
their  confidence  were  what  must  be  tried  and  persisted 

10 


130  GREECE  [1862 

in.    Excellent  good  constitutional  language — but  is 
it  all  talk  ? 

My  belief  is  that  the  King  and  all  of  them  have  had 
a  gliff,  and  at  present  mean  to  try  a  new  line;  but 
"  when  the  devil  was  sick,  the  devil  a  saint  would  be," 
and  whether  the  next  line  is  to  be  verified  is  what  we 
must  wait  to  see. 

Juneb. — Yesterday  we  dined  at  Testa's,  the  Austrian 
Minister,  which  I  hope  concludes  our  diplomatic 
dinners,  which  are  very  painful  in  this  hot  weather 
and  with  the  company  we  are  confined  to. 

As  it  is,  I  am  nearly  written  out,  and  in  one  or  two 
weeks  I  shall  certainly  be  pumped  dry,  for  I  cannot 
go  on  any  longer  repeating  that  the  King's  un- 
popularity is  so  great  that  nothing  but  the  want  of 
someone  to  put  in  his  place  keeps  him  on  his  throne. 
It  is  no  doubt  as  true  as  Gospel,  but  even  of 
Gospel  one  cannot  go  on  for  ever  repeating  the  same 
chapter. 

People  tell  me  now  that  a  spirit  of  disaffection  has 
got  to  such  a  height  in  the  army  that  some  expect  it  to 
show  itself  before  long  in  overt  acts,  and  declare  that 
it  will  be  a  much  more  serious  affair  than  that  of 
Nauplia.  If  the  part  of  the  army  which  then  remained 
true  were  now  to  rise  against  him  it  would  be  "  Good- 
night to  Otho/'  No  one  expects  the  non-military 
part  of  the  people  to  rise,  but  still  more  certain  is  it 
that  they  would  not  stir  in  defence  of  the  King  if  the 
army  should  fail  him. 

I  have  heard  from  Sir  Henry  Storks,  who  says  that 
the  Ionian  Parliament  closed  their  session  by  voting 
an  address  to  the  Queen  for  union  with  Greece.  It  is 
curious  how  little  anxious  Greece  seems  to  be  to  have 
them.  I  suppose  the  reason  is  as  I  have  been  told — 
that  the  Greeks  are  afraid  that  the  Ionians  would  carry 
off  too  large  a  share  of  the  loaves  and  fishes.  Never- 
theless, I  wish  an  attempt  were  made  to  come  to  an 
arrangement  by  which  they  should  be  given  up  to 


TALK  WITH  WENDLANDT  131 

Greece,  except  Corfu,  which  should  be  retained  as  a 
military  possession. 

An  impression  is  gaining  ground  that  the  King  does 
not  after  all  mean  to  dissolve  the  Chambers  at  the  end 
of  the  Extraordinary  Session.  I  called  upon  Wend- 
landt,  and  what  he  said  rather  confirmed  the  report — 
that  is  to  say,  he  told  me  that  it  is  not  quite  decided 
whether  the  dissolution  is  to  be  immediate,  on  account 
of  the  harvest  and  other  inconveniences. 

I  told  him  that  these  were  very  minor  evils  to  those 
which  must  immediately  result  from  a  postponement 
of  the  dissolution  which  would  be  taken  as  evidence 
that  the  King  did  not  intend  to  dissolve;  and  the 
distrust  of  the  King  was  so  great  that  it  was  indis- 
pensable for  him  to  take  steps  at  once  to  restore 
confidence  in  his  intention,  which  could  only  be  done 
by  his  Ministers  at  once  making  in  his  name  a  de- 
claration of  his  intention  to  dissolve  as  soon  as  the 
Electoral  Law  was  passed,  and  to  have  the  new 
elections  free  from  all  influence. 

I  asked  Wendlandt  to  tell  the  King  what  I  had  been 
saying,  which  he  promised  to  do.  He  confirmed  all  I 
said  of  the  general  distrust  of  the  King,  declaring  that 
it  had  now  penetrated  into  every  class  of  society.  He 
assured  me  that  five  out  of  the  seven  new  Ministers 
had  been  selected,  and  have  accepted:  if  so,  to- 
morrow we  should  see  the  Government  formed. 
Wendlandt  spoke  of  the  insuperable  hesitation  of  the 
King  in  making  up  his  mind.  I  made  some  strongish 
remarks,  which  I  meant  him  to  repeat,  of  the  fatal 
consequences  of  hesitation  in  moments  of  difficulty, 
and  on  getting  home  I  wrote  him  a  long  letter  recapi- 
tulating what  I  had  been  saying,  so  that  he  can  show 
it  to  the  King  if  he  likes. 

I  hope  I  spoke  plainly  enough  to  the  King  the  other 
day :  I  believe  I  did,  but  am  rather  alarmed  by  hearing 
from  various  quarters  that  their  Majesties  are  much 
pleased  with  me,  and  are  convinced  that  I  have  their 


132  GREECE  [1862 

interests  at  heart.  It  is  difficult  in  a  set  speech  to  a 
King  to  bring  all  his  misdeeds  before  him,  but  I  do 
think  that  I  told  him  very  distinctly  that  he  had  done 
the  things  he  ought  not  to  have  done,  and  had  left 
undone  the  things  he  ought  to  have  done. 

Last  night  an  officer  who  had  been  active  in  dis- 
persing the  Nauplia  insurgents  was  shot  at  his  own 
door. 

June  8. — At  last  we  have  a  Government,  and  Theo- 
cari  belongs  to  it,  as  well  as  several  others  who  are 
considered  respectable  people.  The  bad  one  of  the  lot 
is  Spiro  Milio,  the  Minister  of  War,  whose  character 
will  not  bear  too  close  examination,  and  who,  as 
Wendlandt  told  me,  had  been  accused  of  some 
'  gaspillage,"  but  a  trifle  of  this  kind  is  so  common 
among  all  who  have  been  in  office  that  perhaps  it  may 
not  be  considered  any  very  serious  objection. 

When  they  were  sworn  in,  the  King  addressed  them 
publicly  in  the  presence  of  the  Metropolitan  and  the 
whole  Court,  and  said  he  intended  to  pass  the 
Electoral  Law,  to  have  the  next  elections  quite  freely 
conducted,  and  in  every  respect  to  govern  in  a  strictly 
constitutional  manner. 

Though  as  yet  these  are  but  words,  it  is  a  step  to 
have  got  the  King  to  make  this  open  declaration,  and 
I  am  conceited  enough  to  believe  that  it  was  in  part 
produced  by  my  letter  to  Wendlandt,  which  can  only 
have  been  received  six  or  eight  hours  before  the 
swearing-in. 

To-day  Wendlandt  called  to  thank  me  in  the  King's 
name  for  my  "  excellent  advice, "  which  His  Majesty 
is  determined  to  follow  as  far  as  possible,  etc.,  etc. 
He  was  to  give  me  the  most  positive  assurance  that, 
whatever  is  decided  as  to  the  moment  for  the  new 
elections,  the  present  Chamber  shall  sit  no  more  after 
voting  the  Electoral  Law. 

The  Ministers  are  preparing  a  programme,  which 
will  be  out  in  a  day  or  two,  and  then  will  be  the 


NEW  MINISTRY  133 

moment  when  the  special  mission  ought  to  have  taken 
its  departure,  and  the  want  of  a  telegraph  is  a  nuisance 
for  I  might  at  once  have  been  authorised  to  announce 
Scarlett's  appointment  and  my  own  disappearance, 
which  would  have  made  a  much  better  end  than  having 
to  stay  to  witness  the  squabbling  over  the  National 
Guard  and  the  Electoral  Law. 

June  9. — Saw  Theocari,  the  new  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs.  He  speaks  very  fairly,  and  declares  that  the 
Government  will  not  remain  in  if  the  King  swerves 
from  his  present  constitutional  intentions.  How- 
ever, no  one  believes  in  improvement,  and  the 
common  declaration  is  that  King  Otho  has  become 
impossible. 

June  12. — Theocari,  the  one  man  who  gave  the 
Government  a  stamp  of  respectability,  has  had  an 
apoplectic  or  paralytic  attack. 

To-day  I  had  the  visit  of  the  Prime  Minister, 
Colocotroni,  and  of  the  black  sheep  of  the  lot,  Spiro 
Milio,  the  Minister  of  War.  Colocotroni  wears  the 
white  fustinella  or  petticoat,  and  does  not  speak  a  word 
of  French,  and  brought  the  other  as  his  interpreter. 
He  is  not  to  be  trusted. 

June  19. — Photiades,  the  Turkish  Minister,  told 
me  an  amusing  story.  A  few  nights  ago  he  was  told 
that  two  men  wished  to  see  him  on  important  business, 
and  had  them  ushered  in,  when  there  appeared  two 
wild-looking  individuals  in  Albanian  dresses,  who  gave 
the  names  of  two  of  the  most  notorious  of  the  brigand 
chiefs.  Our  friend  evidently  did  not  like  the  ap- 
pearance or  names  of  his  visitors,  but  asked  them 
civilly  to  what  he  was  indebted  for  the  honour  of  their 
visit,  to  which  they  replied  that  they  had  come  to  offer 
their  services  if  he  had  anything  he  wanted  done  in 
their  line  of  business :  they  further  said  that  they  had 
been  employed  (as  Photiades  already  knew)  in  the 
incursions  into  Thessaly  in  1854,  since  which  time  they 
had  received  a  pension  from  the  Greek  Government  till 


134  GREECE  [1862 

the  Nauplia  insurrection  made  money  scarce  and  their 
pay  was  stopped.  Consequently,  being  hard  up  and  in 
no  good  humour  with  the  Greek  Government,  they 
hinted  that  if  Photiades  had  any  little  job  to  do,  such 
as  putting  King  Otho  out  of  the  way,  they  were  quite 
ready  to  execute  the  commission  faithfully  and  like 
men  of  honour.  Photiades  thanked  them,  but  said 
he  had  no  employment  for  them ;  but  that  he  would  do 
what  he  could  to  get  the  Greek  Government  to  con- 
tinue their  pensions:  so  next  day  he  got  hold  of 
Colocotroni,  King  Otho's  Prime  Minister,  and  told  him 
the  story  from  one  end  to  the  other,  and  in  two  hours 
orders  were  given  for  the  continuance  of  the  pensions, 
and  for  the  payment  of  all  arrears  to  these  two  worthies, 
one  of  whom  makes  a  boast  that  in  his  professional 
career  he  has  with  his  own  hand  killed  a  hundred  and 
thirty  men.  Such  are  the  pensioners  of  King  Otho, 
and  such  the  people  he  employs  to  deliver  the  Christian 
subjects  of  the  Porte. 

June  25. — To-day  had  a  visit  from  a  certain 
Boudouri,  formerly  President  of  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies,  who  had  been  quietly  put  in  prison  for  about 
three  weeks  during  the  Nauplia  movement,  no  charge 
having  ever  been  brought  against  him.  When  arrested 
he  was  going  to  dine  with  Mavrocordato,  but,  on 
saying  he  did  not  want  to  go  to  prison  on  an  empty 
stomach,  the  functionary  politely  said  that  he  would 
wait  till  after  dinner,  as  he  wished  to  treat  him 
with  respect,  as  some  day  no  doubt  he  would  be  a 
Minister. 

June  26. — This  afternoon  I  got  the  despatches 
announcing  Scarlett's  appointment  and  my  orders  to 
come  home. 

July  1. — For  the  last  two  days  I  have  been  em- 
ployed at  my  old  trade  of  King  lecturing,  but  hope  I 
have  now  done  with  it  for  a  time. 

On  Saturday  I  had  an  audience  of  leave  of  His 
Majesty,  who  received  me  alone,  when,  in  the  most 


AUDIENCE  OF  LEAVE  135 

insinuating  manner,  I  said  some  things  which  it 
required  a  little  brass  to  bring  out.  I  began  by  con- 
gratulating him  on  the  improvement  which  had  taken 
place  in  public  sentiment  since  the  change  of  Govern- 
ment and  the  announcement  of  the  commencement  of 
a  really  parliamentary  system,  and  which  would  soon 
be  greater  when  it  was  found  that  acts  followed  the 
words,  of  which  people  were  still  slow  to  be  convinced. 
He  repeated  that  he  had  quite  made  up  his  mind  upon 
the  subject,  and  he  meant  to  govern  according  to  the 
Ministerial  programme,  and  declared  that  he  had 
never  had  any  object  in  view  except  the  good  of  his 
people. 

I  answered,  in  the  civillest  way  in  the  world,  that 
I  had  never  thought  of  calling  his  intentions  into 
question,  though  I  had  been  obliged  to  deny  their 
success.  I  then  took  the  opportunity  of  remarking 
that,  while  one  person  preferred  a  despotic  govern- 
ment and  another  liked  a  democratic  form,  everyone 
was  agreed  that  of  all  possible  systems  none  was  so 
utterly  bad  as  a  nominal  Constitution  habitually  set 
at  naught. 

Talking  of  Turkey,  the  King,  having  made  numerous 
protestations  of  his  determination  not  to  disturb  the 
neighbouring  provinces,  said  he  hoped  that  if  the 
Turkish  Empire  should  fall  to  pieces  he  might  count 
upon  England's  showing  some  affection  for  Greece  in 
the  new  arrangements  that  must  be  made ;  upon  which 
I  answered  that  this  would  entirely  depend  upon  the 
way  in  which  Greece  managed  her  own  domestic 
economy ;  that,  if  Greece  had  developed  her  resources, 
had  advanced  her  material  prosperity  to  a  high  pitch, 
and  could  show  an  example  of  good  government  and 
happiness,  our  sympathies  would  certainly  be  on  her 
side ;  but  if,  on  the  contrary,  she  was  ill  administered, 
her  resources  left  undeveloped  and  her  interests 
neglected,  His  Majesty  might  be  sure  that,  whatever 
happened  to  Turkey,  no  one  in  England  would  wish 


136  GEEECE  [1862 

to  see  another  province  added  to  a  Greece  such  as  I 
had  just  described.  I  asked  His  Majesty  to  forgive  my 
frankness,  to  which  he  answered  by  an  uncomfortable 
grin. 

However,  I  seem  to  be  one  of  those  gifted  individuals 
out  of  whose  mouths  the  most  unpleasant  truths  have 
a  charm,  for  the  King's  last  words,  not  at  this  private 
audience  be  it  understood,  but  after  a  dinner  at  the 
Palace  two  days  later  and  before  the  whole  Court, 
were : 

"  Adieu;  j'espere  que  M.  Scarlett  vous  ressemble  !" 
His  Majesty  also  said  how  pleased  he  would  have  been 
to  have  given  me  the  Grand  Cordon  of  the  Redeemer 
of  Greece,  and  was  much  distressed  that  our  regula- 
tions did  not  permit  me  to  accept  it.  Thus  an  un- 
grateful country  prevents  a  faithful  servant  from 
having  this  great  honour,  as  he  had  before  been  pre- 
vented from  accepting  the  St.  Januarius  of  Naples — 
two  desperate  disappointments  ! 

On  Monday  I  had  an  audience  of  leave  of  the  Queen, 
just  before  dinner  at  the  Palace.  She  was  very 
gracious,  but  did  not  touch  upon  politics  till  for 
fun  I  told  her  of  a  report  I  had  just  heard — false,  of 
course — of  the  Servians  having  captured  the  Citadel 
of  Belgrade  by  sudden  assault.  Her  whole  face,  neck, 
shoulders,  etc.,  flushed  with  delight,  and  she  said  at 
once  that  she  was  always  on  the  side  of  the  Christians, 
and  did  not  at  all  agree  when  I  said  that  no  country 
was  more  interested  than  Greece  in  the  tranquillity  of 
the  Turkish  frontiers. 

I  sat  next  to  her  at  dinner,  when  she  became 
very  political,  and  I  was  rather  confirmed  in  the 
belief  that  the  Court  really  see  that  sooner  or 
later  things  will  go  ill  with  them  if  they  do  not  take 
care. 

After  dinner  the  King,  who  is  as  deaf  as  a  post,  came 
up  to  me,  and  in  the  hearing  of  several  people  asked 
me  what  was  the  character  of  the  ex- King  Francis  of 


DINNER  AT  PALACE  137 

Naples  !  I  was  rather  surprised,  but  the  chance  was 
too  good  a  one  to  be  lost,  and  as  it  is  civil  to  raise  one's 
voice  sufficiently  to  overcome  His  Majesty's  dulness  of 
hearing,  I  took  especial  care  to  do  so  on  this  occasion, 
and  said  that  with  a  very  ordinary  intellect,  the  King 
had  had  no  education,  and  was  incapable  of  seeing  the 
necessity  for  following  good  advice,  and  had  fallen  in 
consequence.  He  then  asked  me  what  that  advice  had 
been,  and  I  told  him  it  had  been  to  grant  his  people 
those  constitutional  reforms  that  the  whole  country 
was  calling  for.  Upon  which  His  Majesty  observed 
that  the  King  of  Naples  had  at  last  given  a  Con- 
stitution. "  So  he  did,  Sire,"  was  my  answer,  "  but  he 
put  it  off  till  it  was  too  late,  when  it  was  powerless  to 
stop  a  revolution  already  begun,  though  everybody 
who  knew  anything  of  Naples  was  convinced  that  he 
might  have  saved  himself  if  he  had  adopted  it 
sooner,"  and  that,  moreover,  I  knew  that  King  Francis 
himself  now  admits  that  if  he  had  listened  to  us  he 
would  at  the  present  moment  have  been  still  on  his 
throne. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  King  Otho's  question 
to  me  was  dictated  by  a  feeling  that  he  was  in  a 
position  not  very  unlike  that  of  King  Francis,  and  by 
an  uneasy  dread  that,  as  the  same  doctor  was  pre- 
scribing the  same  remedy,  a  neglect  of  it  might  be 
followed  by  a  catastrophe  in  his  own  case,  as  it  had 
been  in  that  of  his  royal  brother. 

It  was  an  odd  conversation  for  a  King  to  choose  to 
begin  in  the  presence  of  a  good  many  people,  which 
makes  it  look  all  the  more  as  if  it  had  been  weighing 
on  his  mind. 

July  2. — A  hot  day,  uncomfortably  spent  in  saying 
good-bye  to  people — Wendlandt,  the  King's  private 
secretary,  among  others,  almost  boisterously  con- 
stitutional. The  sly  fox ;  I  can't  quite  make  him  out, 
but  he  is  not  the  man  in  whom  I  should  be  disposed  to 
place  implicit  trust. 


138  GREECE  [i§62 

I  can't  help  regretting  being  at  the  last  day  of  this 
place,  for  there  is  something  very  captivating  about 
the  look  of  it,  arid  and  dry  as  it  now  all  is;  and  the 
buildings  and  ruins  one  becomes  more  and  more 
attached  to,  and  less  indulgent  to  those  who  have  done 
them  more  damage  than  the  two  thousand  years 
of  natural  decay  —  that  is  to  say,  the  Turks  and 
Venetians. 

We  left  Athens  by  the  Marseilles  steamer  on 
the  4th,  and  arrived  in  London  on  the  12th  Julv, 
1862. 


CHAPTER  VI 

GREECE— II.,  1863 

[The  frequent  mention  of  the  Ionian  Islands  and  their 
cession  to  Greece  on  the  accession  of  Prince  William  of  Den- 
mark (King  George  I.)  to  the  throne  makes  it  desirable  to 
recall  to  the  reader's  mind  something  of  the  history  of  these 
Islands.  After  the  fall  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon  I.  they  were 
in  1815  constituted  into  the  "  United  State  of  the  Ionian 
Islands  "  under  the  Protectorate  of  Great  Britain;  they  were 
governed  by  two  Assemblies  and  a  Lord  High  Commissioner, 
the  representative  of  Great  Britain;  their  material  prosperity 
greatly  increased  under  British  rule,  but  friction  was  constant, 
and  a  strong  demand  for  annexation  to  Greece  arose.  The 
cession  of  the  Islands  to  Greece  has  been  blamed  by  some  in 
view  of  their  value  as  a  Naval  Station,  but  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  it  was  a  wise  and  politic  step  and  fully  justified  by 
results.] 

The  inevitable  catastrophe  overtook  King  Otho  even 
sooner  than  I  had  anticipated,  for  within  four  months 
from  the  time  of  my  leaving  Athens  he  was  overthrown 
by  a  bloodless  revolution,  in  which  not  a  single  hand 
was  raised  in  his  favour,  and  his  deposition  was  pro- 
nounced by  a  unanimous  vote  of  the  Chamber. 

No  one  who  knew  anything  of  the  state  of  things  in 
Greece  could  be  surprised  at  what  had  occurred,  and 
still  less  could  anyone  who  took  an  interest  in  her 
regret  the  departure  of  a  Sovereign  who,  during  a  reign 
of  thirty  years,  had  done  absolutely  nothing  for  the 
development  of  his  country,  or  to  improve  its  position; 
but  the  question  of  finding  a  suitable  successor  to  him 
was  likely  to  be  attended  with  difficulty,  as  it  was 
necessary  that  he  should  be  acceptable  to  the  three 
Protecting  Powers— England,  France,  and  Russia— 

139 


140  GREECE  [1862 

each  of  which  might  wish  to  favour  a  candidate  over 
whom  it  could  hope  to  be  able  to  exert  influence. 

During  nearly  the  whole  of  Otho's  reign  there  had 
been  in  Greece  what  were  called  an  English,  a  French, 
and  a  Russian  party,  struggling  for  ascendency,  some- 
times one  and  sometimes  another  getting  the  upper 
hand;  but  at  the  time  of  Otho's  fall  the  object  upon 
which  the  Greeks  had  set  their  hearts  was  the  establish- 
ment of  a  free  constitutional  government,  and,  be- 
lieving that  it  was  to  us  they  must  look  for  support 
in  obtaining  it,  they  were  seized  with  a  passionate 
love  for  England,  which  made  our  influence  over- 
whelming. 

As  Campbell  Scarlett  had  been  appointed  Minister 
in  Greece,  and  was  at  Athens  when  the  revolution 
occurred,  I  was  not  a  little  surprised  to  receive  an 
intimation  that  the  Government  wished  me  at  once  to 
return  there  on  another  special  mission,  which  promised 
to  be  both  important  and  interesting;  and  this 
certainly  proved  to  be  the  case,  for,  upon  arriving  in 
London  after  receiving  Lord  Russell's  summons,  I 
found  that  there  was  to  be  more  in  my  mission  than 
merely  to  guide  the  Greeks  in  the  choice  of  a  Sovereign. 
I  was  to  announce  that,  if  they  selected  a  King  likely 
to  remain  in  friendly  relations  with  Turkey,  we  would 
be  willing  to  make  over  to  them  the  Ionian  Islands ;  and 
as  there  was  an  obvious  risk  in  establishing  the  Greeks 
in  a  position  within  gunshot  of  the  Turkish  shore,  I 
was  told  that  our  Government  hoped  to  remove  the 
objection  by  inducing  the  Sultan  to  abandon  the 
provinces  of  Thessaly  and  Epirus  to  Greece ;  and  that, 
if  I  saw  any  prospect  of  success  for  this  scheme,  I  was 
to  go  on  to  Constantinople  to  arrange  with  the  Porte 
about  the  cession. 

As  all  this  was  to  be  kept  entirely  secret,  it  was  not 
obvious  how,  at  Athens,  I  was  to  ascertain  the  pros- 
pects of  success — for  the  difficulties  to  be  expected 
would  certainly  not   come   from   Greece   but   from 


VAGUE  INSTRUCTIONS  141 

Turkey;  and  moreover,  when  I  asked  Lord  Palmerston 
whether  there  was  any  reason  for  believing  the  Turks 
to  be  ready  to  make  this  voluntary  sacrifice  of  territory 
to  not  over-friendly  neighbours,  as  he  only  answered 
in  his  jaunty  off-hand  way,  "  Oh,  they  will  do  it  if 
we  advise  it,"  I  saw  that  the  ground  had  not  been  felt; 
but  I  took  it  for  granted  that  the  official  instructions 
which  I  was  to  take  with  me  would  contain  something 
more  definite  for  my  guidance.  Great,  therefore,  was 
my  surprise  when,  just  as  I  was  leaving  London, 
these  instructions  were  put  into  my  hands,  and  I 
found  nothing  more  in  them  than  a  vague  intimation 
that  "  it  was  desirable  to  improve  the  relations  of 
Greece  and  Turkey,"  and  that  if  I  saw  any  probability 
of  being  able  to  accomplish  this  I  was  to  proceed  to 
Constantinople  with  that  object.  This  was  not  al- 
together satisfactory,  for  the  paragraph  was  intended 
to  convey  even  more  than  Burleigh's  famous  nod  of 
his  head ;  and,  though  I  never  was  afraid  of  responsi- 
bility, I  did  not  quite  like  to  see  that,  if  I  moved  in 
the  matter  and  difficulties  of  any  kind  ensued,  I 
should  not  be  able  to  point  to  a  word  in  my  instruc- 
tions that  seemed  to  justify  my  action. 

A  wilder  project  was  never  conceived  or  attempted 
to  be  so  lightly  carried  out,  but  the  Government  was 
so  enamoured  of  it,  and  apparently  so  confident  of 
success,  that  they  at  once  took  the  Greek  Charge 
d'Affaires  into  their  confidence,  with  the  inevitable 
result  that,  before  I  reached  Greece,  this  dead  secret 
was  known  not  only  at  Athens  but  at  Constantinople, 
where  the  dismay  and  consternation  it  produced 
quickly  put  an  end  to  it,  and  the  matter  was  quietly 
dropped. 

The  selection  of  a  new  Sovereign  for  Greece  did  not 
promise  to  be  an  easy  affair;  for,  while  the  English 
and  Russian  Governments  had  signed  a  protocol 
excluding  members  of  the  royal  and  imperial  families, 
the   Greeks    had   almost    unanimously   determined 


142  GREECE  [1862 

that  they  would  have  no  King  but  Prince  Alfred, 
the  Duke  of  Edinburgh,  on  whom  they  had  fixed 
their  choice  before  the  deposition  of  Otho,  and  who 
afterwards,  in  spite  of  our  formal  declaration  that  he 
could  not  accept  the  crown,  was  elected  King  by  a 
national  vote,  and  saluted  as  such  with  101  guns. 

Moreover,  as  soon  as  the  protocol  was  signed  the 
Russians  pretended  that  it  did  not  exclude  the  Duke 
of  Leuchtenberg  from  the  candidature,  denying  that 
he  was  a  member  of  the  imperial  family,  although,  on 
his  father's  marriage  with  a  daughter  of  the  Emperor 
Nicholas,  he  and  his  descendants  had  been  officially 
recognised  as  belonging  to  it,  and  they  only  consented 
to  his  exclusion  upon  being  given  to  understand  by 
our  Government  that,  if  he  was  not  excluded,  neither 
should  Prince  Alfred  be. 

The  anxiety  of  the  Greeks  to  have  Prince  Alfred, 
and  the  refusal  of  our  Government  to  allow  him  to 
accept  the  Crown,  almost  imposed  upon  them  the  duty 
of  taking  the  lead  in  making  another  arrangement, 
and  it  was  by  no  means  easy  to  find  an  eligible  Prince 
who  would  not  be  distasteful  to  one  or  other  of  the 
Protecting  Powers. 

Among  those  favourably  thought  of  by  Her 
Majesty's  Government  were  King  Ferdinand  of 
Portugal,  Ernest  Duke  of  Saxe-Coburg,  Prince 
Leiningen,  Prince  Hohenlohe,  Prince  Waldemar  of 
Holstein,  and  the  Archduke  Maximilian  of  Austria. 
The  Russian  party  in  Greece  would  have  preferred 
Prince  William  of  Baden,  who  was  about  to  marry  a 
Russian  Grand  Duchess.  The  partisans  of  France 
turned  their  eyes  towards  the  Due  d'Aumale.  Others 
were  ready  to  elect  Lord  Derby  or  any  rich  English 
nobleman,  and  the  Royal  Family  of  Bavaria  had  not 
withdrawn  their  claims ;  but  the  throne  of  Greece  was 
at  that  time  looked  upon  as  a  very  unstable  seat,  which 
few  were  disposed  to  occupy. 

The  first  to  whom  our  Government  made  the  offer  was 


CANDIDATES  FOR  THE  THRONE       143 

King  Ferdinand  of  Portugal,  a  member  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Kohary  branch  of  the  Coburgs,  and  the  father 
of  the  young  King,  but  he  steadily  refused  to  allow 
himself  to  be  nominated,  not  much  to  the  regret  of 
the  Greeks,  who  had  no  wish  to  take  as  their  King 
another  Catholic,  a  childless  widower  without  private 
fortune.  The  negotiation  with  him  lasted  some  time, 
and  on  his  final  refusal  communications  were  opened 
with  the  Duke  of  Saxe-Coburg,  who  intimated  his 
willingness  to  accept  the  crown  upon  conditions 
which  the  Greeks  were  ready  to  agree  to,  but  after- 
wards, without  giving  any  good  reason,  suddenly 
changed  his  mind  and  declined.  Then  Prince  Walde- 
mar  of  Holstein  was  appealed  to,  and  when  he  also 
declined  Her  Majesty's  Government  unaccountably 
turned  their  thoughts  to  the  Archduke  Maximilian 
of  Austria,  the  unfortunate  Emperor  of  Mexico. 
As  far  as  personal  qualifications  were  concerned 
the  Gotha  Almanac  did  not  probably  contain  the 
name  of  a  Prince  more  likely  to  prove  a  good  and 
enlightened  Sovereign,  but  at  Athens  the  Austrians 
were  scarcely  less  unpopular  than  the  Bavarians,  and 
the  whole  nation  would  have  scouted  with  indignation 
a  proposal  to  elect  him  King.  However,  this  strange 
notion  was  quickly  dropped,  and  the  Greeks  never 
knew  that  it  had  been  entertained. 

King  Ferdinand,  during  the  minority  of  his  son,  had 
shown  so  much  wisdom  while  acting  as  Regent  of 
Portugal  that  when  I  left  England  our  Government 
was  making  every  effort  to  secure  him  for  the  throne  of 
Greece,  but  if  he  could  not  be  tempted  to  quit  his 
retirement  Lord  Russell's  next  choice  would  have 
been  Prince  Leiningen,  with  the  reversion  to  his 
brother  and  his  brother's  children;  and  if  the  Greeks 
were  to  propose  either  him  or  Prince  Hohenlohe  I  was 
not  to  discourage  the  idea,  though  I  was  not  to  suggest 
it;  in  point  of  fact,  neither  of  their  names  was  ever 
seriously  brought  forward. 


144  GREECE  [1862 

At  Paris  I  saw  Drouyn  de  Lhuys,*  just  made  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  who  was  extremely  friendly,  and 
who  quite  disagreed  with  Bouree,  the  French  Minister 
at  Athens,  who  advocated  the  occupation  of  Greece 
by  a  corps  of  allied  troops  to  prevent  disorder.  He 
spoke  of  a  report  from  Athens  that  the  name  of  the 
Due  d'Aumale  was  to  be  brought  forward,  and, 
without  saying  much,  he  showed  that  it  would  be  very 
distasteful  to  him;  but  although  Drouyn  de  Lhuys 
was  cordial  and  friendly,  on  arriving  at  Athens  I 
found  his  Minister  in  a  very  different  frame  of  mind, 
for  he  was  so  much  enraged  at  seeing  the  Greeks 
throw  themselves  into  our  arms  that  he  completely 
lost  his  balance,  and  thought  of  nothing  but  how  to  get 
up  an  opposition  to  us,  and,  though  he  entirely  failed, 
his  intrigues  gave  much  trouble. 


Extracts  from  Journal  and  Private 

Letters. 

Athens,  December  23,  1862.— Arrived  at  the  Piraeus 
this  morning  in  the  frigate  Liffey,  Captain  George 
Parker. 

Scarlett  sent  to  invite  us — i.e.,  self  and  Charlief — 
to  a  diplomatic  dinner.  Found  there  almost  all  the 
old  colleagues — viz.,  Bouree  and  Madame  (French), 
Testa  and  Madame  (Austrian),  Photiades  and  Madame 
(Turkish),  Bludow  and  Madame  (Russian). 

Bouree  declares  that  no  king  will  be  able  to  keep 
things  going  without  not  only  the  moral  but  the 
material  support  of  one  or  more  of  the  Great  Powers. 

Told  him  that  material  support  seemed  to  me  quite 
out  of  the  question,  which  was  also  the  opinion  of 

*  B.  1805,  d.  1886.  French  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  from 
1863  to  1866. 

f  The  Hon.  Charles  Elliot,  afterwards  Admiral  of  the 
Fleet. 


JOURNAL  COMMENCES  145 

Drouyn    de    Lhuys.     He   said   Drouyn   was    quite 
wrong. 

I  asked  about  the  name  of  the  Due  d'Aumale  having 
been  put  forward.  He  said  he  had  heard  that  it 
was  talked  of  here,  and  that  he  had  telegraphed  as 
much  to  Paris,  and  had  declared  on  all  sides  that  such 
an  election  would  be  regarded  by  the  Emperor  as 
personally  offensive  to  himself.  He  had  received  a 
telegram  from  Paris  with  strong  injunctions  not  to 
favour  the  election  of  the  Duke.  In  the  course  of 
conversation  he  said  he  had  heard  that  I  had  come  to 
get  Thessaly  and  Epirus  for  the  Greeks.  Photiades 
also  told  me  that  Bouree  had  been  to  him  in  great 
excitement  about  Thessaly  and  Epirus.  To  him  I 
plainly  said  that  my  Government  thought  it  would 
be  advisable  for  Turkey  to  give  up  those  provinces, 
but,  in  reply  to  a  question  whether  I  was  going  to 
Constantinople  to  urge  it,  I  told  him  that  I  should 
not  do  so  unless  I  saw  a  fair  chance  of  success.  We 
talked  the  thing  over,  and  it  ended  by  his  saying  that 
if  it  depended  upon  him  he  would  consent  to  the 
measure.  He  feels  that  Corfu,  when  once  given  up  to 
Greece,  must  become  a  centre  of  Greek  propaganda, 
and  that  the  neighbouring  Turkish  provinces  could 
only  be  kept  at  a  ruinous  expenditure;  but  he  did  not 
give  me  much  reason  to  expect  that  the  suggestion 
will  be  well  received  by  his  Government.  Mamiami, 
the  Italian,  and  Hompesch,  the  Bavarian  Minister, 
were  the  only  ones  not  at  Scarlett's  dinner.  I  sat 
next  Madame  Bludow,  who  not  very  unnaturally 
seems  to  resent  having  such  a  colleague  as  Madame 
Mamiami,  but  is,  I  think,  ignorant  of  her  former 
calling  as  a  painter's  model.  The  poor  woman  is 
decently  draped  now,  and  I  did  not  uncover  her. 
.  December  26. — The  force  and  unanimity  of  the  en- 
thusiasm for  Prince  Alfred  have  certainly  not  been 
exaggerated  by  the  newspapers.  It  prevails  every- 
where, and  even  now  the  people  will  not  hear  of  any 

11 


146  GREECE  [1863 

alternative.  It  is  ten  days  since  the  official  note  was 
sent  in  by  which  the  Duke  of  Leuchtenberg  and 
Prince  Alfred  were  both  formally  declared  to  be  in- 
eligible, but  it  seems  to  make  no  difference,  and  the 
Greeks  still  declare  themselves  determined  to  have 
him,  whether  we  like  it  or  not. 

Yesterday  a  deputation  from  the  club,  "  National 
Opinion,"  called  upon  me  to  express  the  unanimous 
wish  of  the  nation  for  Prince  Alfred.  It  gave  me  the 
opportunity  of  asking  them  to  make  it  known  that, 
however  much  we  might  be  flattered  by  the  constancy 
of  their  affection,  they  were  trying  for  what  was 
unattainable,  and  that  they  had  better  be  good  boys 
and  leave  off  crying  for  the  moon,  and  be  satisfied 
with  something  more  within  their  reach.  I  said  I  had 
heard  that  some  people  declared,  if  they  could  not 
get  Prince  Alfred,  that  they  would  have  a  Republic, 
though  I  could  not  believe  they  would  do  anything 
so  foolish,  as  they  must  be  aware  that  they  would 
injure  themselves  far  more  than  they  would  punish  us, 
and  that,  moreover,  in  such  a  case  the  intention  of 
giving  them  the  Ionian  Islands  would  certainly  not 
be  carried  out. 

It  seems  that  Bouree  had  encouraged  the  bringing 
forward  of  Aumale's  name  for  a  day  or  two,  till  his 
Government  told  him  to  be  quiet,  which  is  exactly 
what  he  never  can  be ;  but  he  is  so  wild  against  Prince 
Alfred  that  he  would  have  been  ready  to  run  Nana 
Sahib  against  him. 

December  29. — Yesterday  I  had  two  demonstrations 
in  honour  of  Prince  Alfred.  The  first  was  from  the 
National  Guard,  who  came  in  numbers  below  the 
windows  and  sent  up  a  numerous  deputation,  headed 
by  their  late  chief,  Coroneos,  who  read  an  address 
to  the  effect  that  the  Greeks  were  determined  to 
persist  to  the  death  in  getting  Prince  Alfred,  and  re- 
minding me  that  the  vox  popidi  was  vox  Dei,  and  what 
right  had  anyone  to  resist  the  voice  of  God  ?     They 


POPULARITY  OF  PRINCE  ALFRED     147 

were  aware  that  a  mere  human  instrument,  called  a 
protocol,  was  against  them,  but  how  could  that  oppose 
the  voice  of  the  Almighty  ?  I  was  very  civil,  very 
much  flattered,  but  said  that  we  had  quite  made  up 
our  minds  that  they  could  not  have  the  Prince. 

So  ended  demonstration  number  one.  The  next 
was  a  monster  demonstration  of  many  thousand 
persons,  mostly  respectable-looking,  well-dressed 
people,  and  as  quiet  and  orderly  as  possible.  They 
gathered  gradually  under  the  windows  till  there  was  a 
perfect  forest  of  heads  up  and  down  the  street  and 
in  the  open  space  in  front  of  the  house.  They  had 
a  flag  with  two  angels — or  perhaps  modern  Greeks 
— crowning  Prince  Alfred,  which  excited  immense 
enthusiasm  and  was  loudly  cheered.  They  also  sent 
up  a  deputation,  which  informed  me  that  nothing 
but  death  could  affect  their  determination  to  have 
King  Alfred. 

I  answered,  of  course,  very  much  as  before,  and  the 
deputation  went  down  and  explained  what  I  had  said 
to  the  people  outside,  who  dispersed  in  the  most 
perfect  order.  It  was  certainly  an  extraordinary 
exhibition,  for  there  must  have  been  fully  half  of  the 
adult  male  population  of  Athens  under  my  windows, 
and  there  was  neither  noise  nor  confusion  of  any  sort, 
the  whole  of  them  being  evidently  in  earnest. 

January  2,  1863. — Erskine,  Charge  d'Affaires  at 
Constantinople,  telegraphs  that  the  hints  about 
Thessaly  and  Epirus  have  frightened  the  Turkish 
Ministers  out  of  their  senses,  and  that  they  will  not 
even  mention  it  to  the  Sultan. 

Photiades  has  had  a  telegram  to  the  same  effect, 
saying  that  it  would  lead  to  the  immediate  dismember- 
ment of  the  Empire,  and  that  the  suggestion  had 
been  received  with  profound  grief.  I  told  him  that 
his  Government  need  not  make  themselves  imhappy, 
as  I  should  certainly  not  go  to  Constantinople  to 
make  a  suggestion  which  seemed  so  unpalatable,  and 


148  GREECE  [1863 

that  nothing  had  been  done  on  our  side  beyond  the 
simple  expression  of  an  opinion  on  the  best  course  to 
be  pursued. 

January  5. — Hugh  MacDonell  arrived  from  Con- 
stantinople with  a  letter  from  Erskine  to  explain  to 
me  the  panic  that  had  been  caused  among  the  Turkish 
Ministers  by  Photiades'  despatch.  According  to  him, 
the  Turks  seem  completely  overwhelmed  at  the  idea 
of  such  a  proposal  having  been  hinted  at  by  England, 
and  they  ask  what  worse  could  Russia  or  France  ask 
them  to  do.  In  addition  to  this,  the  Sultan  is  mad, 
and  they  don't  know  what  extravagances  he  may  be 
guilty  of.  He  has  been  distributing  enormous  sums 
among  the  soldiers,  and  MacDonell  says  that  there  is 
an  expectation  of  another  massacre  like  that  of  the 
Janissaries.  All  this,  combined  with  the  account  of 
the  object  of  my  projected  mission,  has  put  the  Divan 
into  a  state  of  black  despair. 

Aali  Pasha  has  begged  that  Sir  H.  Bulwer  might  be 
got  back,  and  Erskine  has  telegraphed  for  him  both  to 
London  and  Alexandria. 

My  temper  is  sorely  tried  in  speaking  to  the  Greek 
Ministers  about  the  candidates.  I  certainly  have 
expressed  myself  on  all  occasions  in  a  way  to  make  it 
impossible  that  there  should  be  any  misunderstanding 
about  the  fact  of  Prince  Alfred's  refusal  being  absolute 
and  final,  but  to-day  Boulgaris,  the  President,  again 
met  me  with,  "  Ainsi  vous  pensez  que  nous  ne  devons 
plus  esperer  d'avoir  le  prince  Alfred,"  and  I  am  con- 
vinced I  shall  have  to  say  the  same  thing  over  again 
the  next  time  I  see  him. 

January  8. — In  talking  to  Diamandopoulos,  the 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  I  found  him  decidedly 
opposed  to  the  idea  of  electing  King  Ferdinand,  and 
he  seriously  hinted  that  an  English  lord  belonging  to 
one  of  our  old  "  families  princieres,"  such  as  Stanley 
or  Seymour,  would  be  preferable.  He  did  not  seem 
to  care  whether  it  was  King  Derby  or  King  Hertford, 


DUKE  OF  COBURG'S  CANDIDATURE    149 

provided  it  was  someone  who  had  plenty  of  money,  for 
one  of  his  chief  objections  to  Ferdinand  is  that  he  is 
poor.  I  asked  if  it  was  not  rather  humiliating  to 
suggest  that  Greece  would  not  support  her  own  King, 
to  which  he  replied  that  "Of  course  we  would  vote 
him  an  allowance,  but  we  think  it  would  be  well  that  he 
should  decline  to  receive  it  !" 

January  9. — I  have  again  been  assured  that  Bouree 
is  trying  to  re-establish  the  French  influence  by 
encouraging  the  "Grande  Idee":  the  chief  of  this 
new  party  is  to  be  Coundourioti,  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs  under  King  Otho  when  I  arrived  here 
last  May. 

January  19. — Yesterday  I  got  two  telegrams 
answering  some  questions  I  had  sent  home.  I  had 
asked  the  opinion  of  Her  Majesty's  Government  with 
regard  to  the  Duke  of  Saxe-Coburg,  Prince  Louis  of 
Hesse,  Prince  Leiningen,  and  Prince  of  Hohenlohe. 
I  had  also  said  that  a  party  here  was  putting  forward 
the  Due  d'Aumale,  and  that  if  we  did  not  put  someone 
else  in  the  ranks  we  should  find  ourselves  with  ground 
to  make  up,  as  Boulgaris,  the  head  of  the  Government, 
among  other  people,  inclines  to  him.  I  said  that  the 
Duke  of  Coburg  would,  I  believed,  be  the  most  popular 
candidate  that  could  be  suggested.  The  telegram 
informs  me  that  General  Grey  had  been  sent  to 
Brussels  to  ascertain  the  Duke's  sentiments,  and  Lord 
John  added  that  he  thought  he  would  accept.  I  was 
also  told  that  the  Due  d'Aumale  would  not  suit  Her 
Majesty's  Government,  so  upon  these  two  points  I  shall 
be  able  to  speak  more  plainly  than  I  have  hitherto 
ventured  to  do.  Lord  Russell  had  before  said:  "I 
personally  should  have  no  objection  to  d'Aumale — 
quite  the  contrary."  So  I  was  rather  left  to  infer  that 
the  objection  was  the  Emperor's  supposed  dislike  of 
him.  Next  to  the  Duke  of  Coburg  Her  Majesty's 
Government  place  Prince  Leiningen;  the  rest  of  my 
list  are  "  nowhere  " — not  placed  or  mentioned. 


150  GREECE  [1863 

That  Bouree  does  underhand  push  Aumale  I  hear 
from  so  many  quarters  that  I  can  hardly  doubt  it.  If 
he  were  elected  he  would  have  to  acknowledge  the 
Emperor,  which  would,  I  should  think,  be  quite 
sufficient  reason  to  prevent  him  from  accepting. 

Bludow  spoke  to  me  to-day  about  the  Duke  of 
Coburg,  and  was  indignant  at  the  notion,  intimating 
that  his  Government  would  be  entirely  opposed,  and 
that  he  was  as  closely  allied  to  England  as  Leuchten- 
berg  to  Russia.  If  we  have  to  fall  back  on  Leiningen 
it  will  be  harder  work.  There  will  be  as  much  opposi- 
tion from  other  Powers,  and  a  weaker  man  to 
support. 

A  few  days  ago  Count  Mamiami  came  and  asked  if 
it  was  true  that  I  had  announced  that  Her  Majesty's 
Government  would  oppose  an  Italian  Prince.  I 
owned  the  soft  impeachment,  and  said  that  they  would 
not  see  in  an  Italian  Prince  the  guarantee  for  the  good 
relations  with  the  neighbouring  States  which  they 
hoped  for. 

He  then  made  a  curious  avowal,  and  said  that 
latterly  the  Eastern  policy  of  his  Government  had 
entirely  changed:  that  some  time  ago,  "  instigated  by 
France,"  which,  he  said,  had  two  years  ago  sent  large 
supplies  of  arms  to  Servia,  they  looked  for  the  early 
downfall  of  Turkey.  But  now  it  was  different,  as  they 
believe  Turkey  to  be  strong  enough  to  stand  against 
her  weak  Christian  subjects,  and  they  see  that  these 
must  not  be  trusted  to.  That  with  regard  to  Hungary, 
however,  the  case  was  different,  and  if  it  became 
necessary  "  for  Italy  to  attack  Austria  she  would 
certainly  make  use  of  the  Hungarians. 

Altogether  it  was  an  open  admission  of  complicity  in 
the  intrigues  that  have  been  going  on  in  these  parts, 
but  I  think  it  must  have  been  in  Rattazzi's  time,  and 
perhaps  the  present  Italian  Govermnent  may  have 
discountenanced  them.  Boulgaris  told  me  distinctly 
that,  shortly  after  Otho's  departure,  the  Provisional 


VERIFICATION  OF  ELECTIONS         151 

Government  had  been  offered  20,000  stand  of  arms, 
and  volunteers  besides,  by  an  Italian  agent;  and, 
when  I  pressed  him,  he  said  that  the  arms  were 
not  to  come  from  the  clubs,  but  from  the  Italian 
Government. 

January  26. — The  Due  d'Aumale  has  gained  much 
ground,  pushed  on  by  Bouree.  Bludow  continues  to 
announce  his  G  overnment  as  being  strongly  opposed  to 
the  Duke  of  Coburg,  and  Bouree  says  that  his  Govern- 
ment do  not  like  it  at  all.  My  private  opinion  (though 
probably  Her  Majesty's  Government  would  not  agree 
with  it)  is  that,  if  any  hitch  takes  place  about  the  Duke 
of  Coburg,  we  had  better  ourselves  propose  Prince 
William  of  Baden,  as  the  only  candidate  likely  to 
unite  the  suffrages  of  the  three  Powers  and  to  secure 
unanimity  here.  The  fact  of  his  being  about  to  marry 
a  Leuchtenberg  is  not  a  sufficient  drawback  to  counter- 
balance the  advantage  of  preventing  this  country  from 
being  pulled  to  pieces  by  the  factions  of  the  three 
Powers. 

January  27. — At  last  the  National  Assembly  has 
finished  the  verification  of  the  elections,  which,  on  the 
Government  side,  were  so  illegally  conducted  that  it 
was  impossible  they  should  not  be  annulled,  and  the 
whole  of  the  Mavromichalis  family,  of  which  ten  or 
twelve  had  seats,  have  been  turned  out.  At  Sparta, 
out  of  a  population  of  37,000  men,  women,  and  children, 
39,000  votes  were  announced  as  having  been  recorded 
for  the  successful  candidate,  the  total  number  of 
qualified  electors  being  about  8,000. 

It  is  said  that  old  Mavromichalis's  wife,  a  regular 
old  Spartan  dame,  when  her  husband  came  back  from 
the  Chamber  and  told  her  that  he  had  been  turned  out, 
fairly  boxed  his  ears,  and,  leaving  his  house,  went  off 
to  the  Piraeus,  declaring  that  she  would  have  nothing 
more  to  do  with  a  Mavromichalis  who  proved  himself 
such  a  spoon  as  to  allow  himself  to  be  treated  in  this 
way.    His  brother  is  the  Minister  of  War,  under  whom 


152  GEEECE  [1863 

the  army  has  become  the  most  disgraceful  military- 
rabble  ever  seen  in  any  country,  or  at  any  time.  He 
continues  the  promotion  of  soldiers,  till  in  an  army  of 
at  most  5,000  men  there  are  supposed  to  be  at  least 
2,000  officers. 

January  28. — To-day  I  got  a  telegram  desiring  me 
formally  to  decline  the  Crown  for  Prince  Alfred  and 
to  recommend  the  Duke  of  Coburg,  which  choice  is 
cordially  approved  by  the  Emperor  of  the  French;  that 
Russia  makes  difficulties  about  the  succession,  which 
will  be  removed  by  the  Duke  and  the  Greek  Parliament 
at  once  naming  a  successor  who  shall  adopt  the  Greek 
religion,  according  to  the  Constitution. 

Bouree  seems  delighted  that  we  should  be  pulling 
together  again,  though  I  cannot  help  having  some  little 
doubt  about  the  cordiality  of  the  French  support  which 
is  announced. 

January  29. — This  morning  I  made  my  com- 
munication about  the  Duke  of  Coburg  to  the  Pro- 
visional Government,  which  received  it  excellently. 
They  see  no  difficulty  in  his  proposal  that  he 
should  retain  his  German  Duchies,  nor  as  to  his 
successor. 

Diamandopoulos,  the  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs, 
came  to  me  and  was  enthusiastic  about  the  Duke,  and 
went  on  to  ask  if  it  was  true,  as  stated  in  a  Trieste 
paper,  that  the  English  Government  meant  to  give  him 
80,000L.  a  year  !  Of  course  I  said  it  was  absurd  to 
suppose  that  we  should  give  anything,  and  that  I 
thought  that  the  Ionian  Islands  might  be  accepted  as  a 
very  tidy  "  dot." 

To  this  his  answer  was:  "  To  be  sure,  the  Ionian 
Islands  are  all  very  well,  but  then  I  thought  that,  as  by 
giving  them  up  you  will  save  some  thousands  a  year, 
you  might  think  it  right  to  divide  some  of  the  saving 
with  us."  This  is  literally  true,  just  as  I  have  written 
it  down. 

January  30. — There  is  some  mystery  about  the 


DUKE  OF  COBURG'S  CHANCES        153 

French  support  of  the  Duke  of  Coburg,  as  Bourse's 
despatches  received  this  morning  show  no  evidence 
of  a  wish  on  the  part  of  France  to  approve.  The 
Assembly  have  named  a  commission  to  count  up  the 
numbers  of  the  national  vote  that  were  given  for  the 
election  of  Prince  Alfred. 

February  2. — The  name  of  the  Duke  of  Coburg  has 
been  capitally  received,  and  from  the  provinces  the 
accounts  are  equally  favourable;  but  the  Russians  here 
seem  furious,  and  Bludow,  who  kept  pretty  calm 
during  the  Alfred  demonstrations,  is  now  very  hot  and 
indignant.  Bouree  has  put  himself  into  a  ridiculous 
position  by  it  being  impossible  for  him  ever  to  consent 
to  play  second  fiddle.  After  I  told  him  of  my  telegram 
announcing  that  the  Emperor  cordially  approved  of 
the  Duke  of  Coburg's  candidature,  he  went  to  Stavros, 
of  the  Bank,  where,  in  the  presence  of  half  a  dozen 
people,  he  gave  out  that  he  had  got  a  telegram  showing 
that  everything  was  now  agreed  upon  between  France 
and  England,  and  that  his  Emperor  had  especially 
insisted  upon  the  adoption  of  the  Greek  religion  by 
the  Duke's  successor.  He  did  this  in  the  full  con- 
viction that  the  steamer  next  day  would  bring  him 
the  confirmation  of  my  despatch;  but,  when  his 
messenger  arrived  without  anything  of  the  kind,  he 
felt  that  he  had  committed  himself  a  good  deal  further 
than  he  likes,  and  he  is  now  by  no  means  easy.  It  is 
very  amusing,  and  serves  him  very  right. 

February  3. — To-day  the  Chambers  voted  the 
decheance  of  King  Otho  and  the  Bavarian  dynasty,  or 
rather  extended  to  the  dynasty  the  vote  which  had 
pronounced  the  King's  expulsion.  After  that  the 
commission  appointed  to  examine  the  votes  for  Prince 
Alfred  announced  that,  out  of  241,000  votes  given  for 
a  constitutional  monarch,  Prince  Alfred  had  received 
230,000.  Upon  this  the  assembly,  by  acclamation, 
passed  a  decree  declaring  Prince  Alfred  to  be  King  of 
Greece  by  the  free  election  of  the  people,  all  the 


154  GREECE  [1863 

members,  except  some  of  the  Mountain  (republicans 
and  sinners)  standing  up  uncovered.  It  has,  of  course, 
for  the  moment  revived  the  Alfred  fever,  and  the  town 
to-night  is  illuminated,  His  Majesty's  accession  having 
been  saluted  with  101  guns. 

The  Russians  are  moving  heaven  and  earth — or, 
what  is  more  to  the  purpose  here,  silver  and  gold — 
to  get  up  a  feeling  or  a  party  against  us,  and  some  of 
our  friends  are  getting  anxious.  If  Bouree  had  only 
received  instructions  to  support  the  Duke  of  Coburg 
all  would  be  plain  sailing. 

February  4. — I  have  received  some  telegrams  show- 
ing, as  I  expected,  that  the  cordial  support  of  France 
for  the  Duke  is  somewhat  doubtful,  but  my  course 
is  made  clear,  and  I  am  to  shove  him  along — with 
France  or  without  her — and  quite  right  too.  I  there- 
fore got  hold  of  Boulgaris,  the  President,  and  pressed 
him  hard  to  lose  no  time. 

February  5. — Yesterday  the  Provisional  Govern- 
ment waited  on  me  and  made  the  formal  communica- 
tion of  the  decree  of  the  National  Assembly  declaring 
Prince  Alfred  elected  King  of  Greece,  to  which  I 
returned  a  no  less  formal  renunciation  on  behalf  of  the 
Queen. 

Poor  Otho  !  The  list  of  the  votes  by  universal 
suffrage  has  just  been  published,  and  is  really  curious, 
the  last  name  on  it  being  that  of  his  unfortunate 
ex-Majesty,  who  received  one  vote.  It  is  positively 
melancholy,  and  puts  one  in  mind  of  the  one  garland 
on  Nero's  tomb. 

Prince  Alfred  got  230,000  votes;  the  Duke  of 
Leuchtenberg,  2,400 ;  Alexander  and  Nicholas  of 
Russia,  each  1,800 ;  a  "  Sovereign  of  any  kind,"  1,700  ; 
"  Long  live  the  three  Powers  "  got  480;  a  Republic,  93; 
Garibaldi,  3 ;  d'Aumale,  3 ;  Napoleon  the  Great,  2 ;  and 
Otho,  1.  I  have  fairly  frightened  Bouree  about  the 
Due  d'Aumale.  I  told  him  to-day  that  all  the  copies 
of  Aumale's  Life  of  Conde  had  just  been  seized  by  the 


DUKE  OF  COBURG'S  REFUSAL         155 

police  at  Paris,  and  added,  "  And  that  is  the  man 
your  Emperor  is  asserted  to  be  favouring."  He  had 
not  heard  of  it,  and  positively  jumped  off  his  chair 
when  I  mentioned  it,  saying  that  he  now  felt  sure  that 
if  the  Duke  had  been  elected  he,  Bouree,  would  have 
been  a  ruined  man  and  never  forgiven.  In  fact,  he  is 
completely  puzzled,  and  does  not  know  what  his 
Government  really  wants. 

Sunday,  February  8. — I  generally  get  telegrams 
on  Sunday  morning  to  distract  my  attention  from 
Dr.  Hill's  sermon,  and  the  one  that  arrived  this 
morning  was  nothing  less  than  the  Duke  of  Coburg's 
final  refusal. 

He  certainly  might  have  known  his  own  mind  a 
little  sooner.  His  own  proposals  had  been  officially 
communicated  here,  and  no  objections  whatever  were 
made  to  them.  He  is  in  the  most  formal  manner 
recommended  to  the  Greeks  for  election,  and  then* 
after  all  he  changes  his  mind;  and  that  apparently  not 
upon  any  freshly  discovered  difficulties,  but  for  reasons 
which  existed  just  as  strongly  from  the  beginning. 

One  reason  he  gives  is  that  the  Bavarians  have  not 
yet  given  up  their  rights,  but  he  knew  that  he  was 
accepting  a  revolutionary  throne  from  which  King 
Otho  had  been  driven  by  the  will  of  the  people,  and 
he  had  no  right  to  expect  that  Otho  would  kindly  help 
to  lift  him  into  it. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  what  may  now  occur  here. 

February  9. — This  breakdown  is  most  unfortunate, 
and  to-day  the  town  seems  to  be  in  black  despair. 
Bouree  pretends  to  me  to  be  very  sorry — other  people 
tell  me  he  is  beaming  with  joy,  telling  them  it  is  their 
own  fault  for  listening  to  a  single  Power.  Bludow 
makes  no  pretence  of  regret — which  is  better.  I  have 
telegraphed  home  that  the  failure  of  a  second  candidate 
has  so  far  affected  English  influence  that  it  would 
not  now  do  to  try  to  carry  a  third  without  the  real 
support  of  France. 


156  GREECE  [1863 

February  11. — I  have  had  a  very  clever  and  very 
amusing  letter  from  Sir  H.  Bulwer*  about  the  proposal 
for  the  cession  by  Turkey  of  Thessaly  and  Epirus,  and 
knocking  about  my  ears  the  arguments  in  its  favour 
which  I  had  written  to  Erskine  at  the  time  it  was 
discussed. 

I  have  been  obliged  to  answer  that  I  at  least  three 
parts  agree  in  all  he  says,  but  that  I  had  advanced  the 
best  reasons  I  could  in  favour  of  the  object  I  was 
ordered  to  carry  out ;  and  that  when  I  was  first  spoken 
to  in  London  about  it  I  had  asked  what  arguments  I 
was  to  use  to  persuade  the  Turks,  as  I  confessed  that 
they  did  not  readily  suggest  themselves  to  my  mind. 

Sir  H.  Bulwer  declares  that  if  Turkey  had  followed 
the  advice  the  whole  fabric  would  have  fallen  about  our 
terrified  heads. 

February  12. — I  hear  through  Stavros  that  the 
•backers  of  Aumale  are  again  busy,  and  it  is  asserted 
that  the  Duke  has  written  to  Piscatory,  formerly 
French  Minister  here,  that  if  the  Greeks  elect  him  he  is 
ready  to  tr}^  his  hand.  Besides  this,  it  is  said  that 
Riza  Palamedes,  who  has  generally  upheld  the  French, 
has  suddenly,  without  having  a  shilling  of  his  own, 
found  means  to  pay  ofi  a  considerable  amount  of  debt. 
He  can  command  some  thirty-five  votes  in  the  As- 
sembly, and  is  therefore  quite  worth  buying ;  and  if  the 
Due  d'Aumale  seriously  wishes  to  stand,  and  is  ready 
to  pay  handsomely,  he  will  be  able  to  make  such  a 
start  before  we  offer  anyone  that  he  may  probably 
succeed.  It  might  not  suit  us,  but,  as  far  as  Greece  is 
concerned,  she  may  very  easily  go  further  and  fare 
worse. 

Her  Majesty's  Government  would  not  like  him;  but 
the  only  arguments  they  have  used  to  me  on  the  subject 
were  based  on  the  fact  of  his  being  a  Catholic,  and 
therefore  likely  to  exalt  that  Church  at  the  expense 

*  Sir  Henry  Bulwer,  afterwards  First  Lord  Dalling,  British 
Ambassador  at  Constantinople  1858-65. 


KING  OTHO'S  LETTERS  157 

of  the  Greek.  They  seem  to  forget  that  the  first 
candidate  they  proposed  was  King  Ferdinand  of 
Portugal,  to  whom  the  same  objection  equally 
applied;  but,  as  I  happen  to  recollect  it,  I  am  afraid 
I  shall  not  have  effrontery  sufficient  to  use  the  argu- 
ment with  much  effect. 

February  16. — Among  the  people  who  came  to  see 
me  to-day  was  Kostaki.  He  is  a  useful  man  and 
particularly  well  informed.  He  told  me  that,  when 
he  was  Under-Secretary  in  1854,  he  had  by  desire  of 
General  Kalergi,  the  Minister  of  War,  written  to  Lord 
Palmerston  to  say  that  the  General  was  quite  pre- 
pared to  bring  about  the  dethronement  of  King  Otho 
without  a  chance  of  bloodshed,  if  Lord  Palmerston 
would  give  the  slightest  sign  of  encouragement.  He 
added  that  he  had  never  received  any  answer  to  his 
letter,  which  is  not  surprising;  but  what  is  surprising 
is  that  he  told  me  this  story  in  the  presence  of  another 
Greek,  and  that  neither  of  them  seemed  to  have  the 
slightest  suspicion  that  the  Minister  of  War  or  the 
Under-Secretary  had  done  anything  questionable  in 
proposing  to  dethrone  the  Sovereign  they  were 
serving. 

Bouree  tells  me  he  has  written  to  Drouyn  de  Lhuys 
that  he  sees  all  the  objections  to  the  Due  d'Aumale, 
and  that  he  sees  all  that  can  be  said  in  his  favour,  but 
that  he  cannot  for  the  life  of  him  understand  how  his 
Government  can  be  indifferent  upon  the  question.  He 
thinks  they  must  either  like  it  or  hate  it. 

February  18. — The  only  thing  that  is  causing  much 
talk  at  this  moment  is  Otho's  correspondence — that  is 
to  say,  the  letters  belonging  to  him  that  he  left  behind. 
They  were  sealed  up  by  the  Provisional  Government, 
and  now  there  is  a  strong  desire  to  examine  and  publish 
them.  The  Russians  are  much  disturbed  at  the 
thought  of  any  of  these  papers  seeing  the  light,  and 
some  of  the  Greeks  seem  so  marvellously  scrupulous 
as  to  give  one  a  pretty  good  guess  that  they  know 


158  GKEECE  [1863 

their  own  names  may  possibly  appear  in  a  way  they 
are  not  ambitious  of. 

February  20. — I  wish  to  goodness  now  that  I  had 
never  come  on  this  confounded  mission.  I  yesterday 
got  a  letter  from  Lord  Russell  saying  he  had  proposed 
to  France  that  they  should  suggest  the  Archduke 
Maximilian  of  Austria  to  the  Greeks  for  election; 
and,  from  a  letter  of  Lord  Cowley's  of  the  12th, 
Drouyn  appears  to  be  quite  agreeable,  but  the  Emperor 
had  not  yet  been  consulted.  He  is  not  likely  to  make 
any  objection,  and  therefore  our  only  hope — fortu- 
nately a  great  one — is  that  it  is  hardly  possible  to 
suppose  that  an  Austrian  Prince  would  become  a 
candidate  for  a  throne  which  its  Bavarian  possessors 
have  not  declared  themselves  ready  to  abandon. 
If  it  were  not  for  this  I  should  be  in  despair,  as  I  can 
conceive  no  more  fatal  proposal  than  this  if  it  should 
come  to  be  formally  made.  It  will  be  absolutely 
and  immediately  destructive  of  our  old  popularity 
in  Greece,  where,  in  return  for  the  proofs  of  regard  they 
have  been  showing  us,  we  shall  be  believed  to  have 
turned  round  and  betrayed  the  liberties  of  the  country. 
Austria  is  not  a  fraction  less  unpopular  than  Bavaria, 
and  the  election  of  the  Archduke  would  be  looked  upon 
very  nearly  in  the  light  of  a  restoration  of  the  Bavarians. 

I  shall  expect  to  be  hooted  in  the  streets,  and  I  feel 
that  I  shall  deserve  it,  not  in  my  private  capacity 
certainly,  but  as  becoming  the  organ  to  propose 
what  must  revolt  the  whole  liberal  feelings  of  Greece. 
In  fact,  it  will  be  impossible  for  me  to  remain  here 
to  carry  out  the  suggestion,  and  I  have  sent  home 
a  letter  to  ask  Lord  Russell  to  let  me  have  by  tele- 
graph permission  to  come  away ;  but  in  order  to  pre- 
vent appearing  to  be  in  a  fuss  about  what  I  believe 
will  never  take  place,  I  have  enclosed  it  to  George,* 
only  to  be  given  to  Lord  Russell  if  Maximilian  is  really 
to  be  proposed. 

*  Hon.  George  Elliot,  private  secretary  to  Lord  Russell. 


STREET  ROWS  159 

I  believe  Maximilian  to  be  a  liberal  and  enlightened 
man,  but  that  is  not  enough  to  counterbalance  the 
drawbacks;  and  I  have  told  Lord  Russell  that  his 
chance  of  success  in  governing  here  will  be  about  as 
great  as  it  would  be  if  he  were  put  on  the  throne  of 
Naples.  Her  Majesty's  Government  have  not  thought 
it  necessary  to  ascertain  what  prospects  the  Archduke 
would  have  of  being  elected,  even  if  we  and  France 
throw  our  whole  united  weight  into  the  scale,  but  my 
own  impression  is  that  his  success  would  be  extremely 
doubtful. 

The  National  Assembly  has  to-day  been  a  perfect 
bear-garden.  Ministers  have  resigned,  and  a  new 
Ministry  is  chosen.  Parties  are  running  strong,  and 
will  get  things  into  a  mess  before  long  if  a  King  is  not 
found.  Placards  in  favour  of  the  Due  d'Aumale 
have  been  posted  up. 

February  21. — The  parties  of  Boulgaris  and  Kanaris 
have  come  to  blows,  and  some  few  people  have  been 
killed.  Fighting  took  place  in  the  early  morning  under 
Vice-Consul  Merlin's  windows,  where  one  officer  was 
killed  and  some  soldiers  wounded.  Casks  of  wine 
suddenly  appeared  at  some  of  the  guard-houses, 
from  which  the  soldiers  sallied  shouting  for  Grivas. 
This  morning  Ruffos  sent  in  his  resignation  as  member 
of  the  Provisional  Government,  whereupon  the  As- 
sembly decided  that  the  Government  should  be  placed 
temporarily  in  the  hands  of  a  President  and  five 
counsellors,  naming  their  own  President,  Balbi, 
President.  A  perfect  panic  in  the  town,  and  not  a 
door  or  a  shutter  open. 

February  22. — The  Assembly  to-day  has  been  busy 
upsetting  its  own  resolutions,  and  has  decided  that 
the  Government  is  to  consist  of  a  single  President 
and  a  Ministry  named  by  the  Assembly.  Moraitini,  a 
good  respectable  man  with  little  or  no  influence,  is 
named  President. 

February  24. — The  new  Ministers,  Balbi,  Demetrius, 


160  GREECE  [1363 

Mavrocordato  (Foreign  Affairs),  Boudouris,  and 
Smolensk,  were  sworn  in  yesterday  in  the  Assembly 
before  the  Metropolitan,  who  made  a  charming  speech, 
ending,  "  As  Hercules  conquered  the  Lerncean  Hydra 
by  the  aid  of  the  faithful  Iolaus,  so  may  you  gentle- 
men triumph  through  the  aid  of  your  virtues  and 
patriotism."  An  archbishop  going  to  Hercules  for 
an  example  is  delicious. 

The  reports  of  large  sums  of  money  being  sent  to  get 
up  an  agitation  for  the  Bavarians  have  acquired  such 
consistency  that  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  disbelieve 
them  entirely.  There  is  strong  reason  for  believing 
that  the  Bavarian  Consul  has  received  900,000 
zwanzigers  for  this  purpose,  and  money  is  certainly 
being  spent  in  the  south  of  the  Peloponnesus,  in 
Maina  and  Laconia. 

February  25. — Mavrocordato,  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs,  told  me  this  morning  that  he  had  ascertained 
the  truth  about  the  Bavarian  Consul  beyond  the 
possibility  of  mistake;  and  Boudouris,  Minister  of 
Marine,  told  me  the  same  thing,  and  that  they  had 
determined  to  pack  him  off. 

February  27. — Near  Navarino  the  country  is  in  the 
hands  of  the  brigands.  The  Mavromichalis  family 
are  there  all-powerful,  and  there  are  grounds  for  sus- 
pecting that,  if  paid,  they  might  be  ready  to  do  a 
stroke  of  business  for  the  Bavarians ;  and  the  Govern- 
ment assure  us  that  they  have  traces  of  a  conspiracy 
to  march  large  bodies  of  armed  men  upon  Athens  for 
the  purpose  of  restoring  that  dynasty. 

Yesterday,  in  the  Assembly,  the  Minister  of  Finance 
announced  that  he  had  just  one  hundred  drachmas 
in  the  Treasury,  on  which  a  loan  was  authorised. 

March  1. — Yesterday  some  arrests  were  made  of 
officers  said  to  have  been  bought  by  Bernau,  the 
Bavarian  Consul,  .who  has  also  been  arrested  and  put 
in  prison.  This  morning  I  had  a  visit  from  his  wife 
and  daughter,  who  asked  me  to  do  what  I  could 


ARRESTS  161 

for  him.  Neither  of  them  said  a  word  about  his 
being  innocent,  and  to  others  they  have  said  that 
it  was  very  hard  he  should  suffer,  as  he  had  only 
continued  to  do  what  Hompesch,  the  Minister,  had 
been  doing  before  he  went  away,  and  what  he  would 
have  done  if  he  had  been  here.  Being  left  by  Hom- 
pesch in  charge  of  the  Legation,  he  had  taken  it  into 
his  head  that  diplomatic  privilege  would  bear  him 
harmless  whatever  he  did,  though  it  is  clear  that  he 
is  not  entitled  to  any  privilege  whatever. 

March  4. — I  got  a  private  letter  from  Lord  Russell, 
asking  if  Prince  Waldemar,  of  Holstein  Augustenberg, 
would  be  well  received — unmarried,  heirless,  and  fifty- 
two  !  What  could  I  say  ?  That  his  name  had 
never  been  heard  in  Athens,  but  that  any  Prince 
recommended  by  England  for  his  personal  qualifica- 
tions would  be  favourably  considered,  and,  if  sup- 
ported by  France,  also  certain  to  be  elected. 

March  6. — It  is  wonderful  how  much  good  is  dis- 
covered in  one,  when  one  happens  for  the  moment 
to  be  popular.  The  Greeks  have  quite  made  up  their 
minds  that  it  was  through  my  instrumentality  that 
the  Bernau  affair  was  brought  to  light,  and  the  country 
saved  from  a  great  danger  ?  The  poor  Austrians, 
on  the  other  hand,  are  suspected  of  every  iniquity, 
and  it  is  useless  to  try  to  say  a  word  in  their  defence. 
The  French  are  supposed,  I  believe  truly,  to  be  sulky. 

In  the  Assembly  a  member  proposed  the  election  of 
a  private  Englishman,  even  if  he  should  not  belong 
to  one  of  the  '  Princely  Families."  I  suppose  he 
meant  Mr.  Gladstone. 

March  8. — The  Government  say  that  the  more 
they  enquire,  the  stronger  they  find  the  proofs  of  the 
Bavarian  plot,  and  there  have  been  some  more  arrests 
— among  others,  that  of  General  Hadjipetros. 

March  11. — A  few  more  arrests,  a  bishop  or  two 
being  in  the  last  batch.  There  is  not  a  shadow  of 
doubt  that  money  has  been  spent  freely. 

12 


162  GREECE  [isgs 

The  French  are  evidently  very  sulky,  and  Kalergi, 
Greek  Minister  at  Paris,  writes  that  Drouyn  says  he 
is  disgusted  with  Greece;  and  Bouree  says,  that  at 
all  events  disgust  is  the  only  word  that  expresses 
the  feeling  of  the  Emperor's  Minister  at  Athens; 
and,  as  this  feeling  is  perfectly  well  known,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  neither  he  nor  his  master  should  be  in 
high  favour  here.  On  the  other  hand,  the  confidence 
in  England  has  been  very  striking ;  but  it  must  break 
down  if  in  the  next  few  days  I  have  nothing  to 
communicate. 

March  13. — I  have  got  a  letter  saying  that  if  Prince 
Waldemar  fails,  Lord  Russell  does  not  think  Her 
Majesty's  Government  would  make  any  objection 
to  Prince  William  of  Baden.  I  am  glad  they  have 
come  to  this  decision,  and  I  confess  that  the  country 
choosing  a  King  for  itself  will  have  a  great  merit  in 
my  eyes. 

March  15. — The  canvass  for  Prince  William  is 
making  such  progress  that  if  I  now  receive  orders 
to  propose  an  utterly  unknown  man  like  Prince 
Waldemar  it  is  impossible  to  foretell  how  matters 
may  go. 

March  17. — No  telegrams,  no  nothing;  but  I 
declare  right  and  left  that  I  have  no  longer  a  doubt 
that  before  the  week  is  out  I  am  certain  of  having 
something  to  say. 

I  have  had  so  many  "  last  nights  "  and  "  very  last 
nights  "  that  I  have  got  to  my  "  absolutely  last  night," 
after  which  the  house  must  positively  be  closed. 
How  they  go  on  believing  me  is  a  marvel.  In  the 
meantime,  here  is  Aumale  again  making  strong 
running,  with  the  appearance  of  being  very  vigorously 
jockeyed.  He  has  been  sounded,  and  his  answer  is 
represented  as  an  intimation  that  he  would  not  be 
unwilling.  This  evening  the  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs  came,  with  the  old  question:  "  Sister  Anne, 
sister  Anne,   do    you   see  anybody   coming  ?"   and 


PRINCE  WILLIAM  OF  DENMARK       163 

sister  Anne  had,  as  usual,  to  return  a  disconsolate 
answer. 

March  18. — The  telegram  I  have  been  so  anxiously 
waiting  for  has  come  at  last,  and  is  enough  to  provoke 
a  much  greater  saint  than  myself.  The  last  one  I 
had  showed  a  disposition  to  accept  Prince  William  of 
Baden  if  Waldemar  broke  down,  and  now  I  am  simply 
told  that  Her  Majesty's  Government  have  no  candi- 
date who  would  accept;  without  a  single  word  about 
Prince  William,  although  they  must  have  got  my 
telegram  plainly  asking  whether  I  was  to  continue  to 
oppose  him  or  not. 

The  telegram  goes  on  to  tell  me  that  the  Greeks 
were  speaking  of  Prince  William  of  Denmark,  as  if 
I  did  not  know  that !  I  had  told  Lord  Russell  long 
ago  that  his  name  would  be  well  received,  and  in  their 
present  despair  the  Greeks  would  now  receive  it  with 
enthusiasm;  and  if  they  would  only  ascertain  in 
London  that  he  would  accept,  and  leave  me  to  do  the 
rest  here,  it  would  be  simple  enough.  But  what  can 
I  do  upon  such  a  telegram  as  I  have  just  got,  and  how 
am  I  to  answer  the  hundred  and  one  people  who  come 
daily  to  ask  about  WTilliam  of  Baden  ? 

March  19. — The  son  of  a  future  King  of  Denmark, 
and  brother  of  a  future  Queen  of  England,  offers  great 
attractions  to  the  nation.  A  report  was  current  that 
I  had  been  ordered  to  recommend  him,  and  the  bare 
rumour  certainly  gave  great  satisfaction.  In  the 
provinces  there  is  no  doubt  it  would  be  warmly 
received,  though  at  Athens  some  persons  look  grave 
at  the  prospect  of  a  regency. 

March  20. — This  morning  one  of  the  Greek  news- 
papers issued  a  supplement  declaring  that,  upon  the 
invitation  of  England,  the  French  and  English  Govern- 
ments had  agreed  to  recommend  the  Greeks  to  elect 
Prince  Louis  of  Bavaria.  A  great  number  of  letters 
have  been  written  from  Paris  in  this  sense,  and  one, 
which  Boudouris  told  me  he  had  seen,  declared  the 


164  GREECE  [lses 

writer  to  have  seen  the  instructions  to  Bouree 
which  announce  this.  About  breakfast-time  I  got  a 
note  from  the  editor  of  another  newspaper  telling 
me  of  this  announcement,  and  asking  if  I  could 
authorise  him  to  contradict  it,  which,  of  course,  I  told 
him  he  might  do  in  the  most  positive  manner,  and  I 
understand  that  a  few  minutes  later  he  published  and 
circulated  my  answer  all  over  the  town.  The  people, 
however,  were  not  to  be  easily  satisfied,  and  they  went 
to  the  printing  office  of  the  offending  paper  and  broke 
the  presses  to  pieces.  Fortunately,  they  could  not 
find  the  supposed  authors  of  the  article,  for  if  they 
had  been  caught  matters  would  have  gone  very 
hardly  with  them.  The  violent  irritation  produced 
this  by  report  ought  to  help  to  make  the  Bavarians 
understand  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  thrust 
them  upon  the  Greeks  by  any  means  short  of  brute 
force. 

March  23. — Have  just  got  a  telegram  which  would 
have  raised  my  hopes  high  if  I  had  not  learned  by 
experience  not  to  give  way  too  much  to  such  feelings 
in  this  matter.  It  tells  me  that  Her  Majesty's 
Government  hope  to  obtain  the  consent  to  the  nomina- 
tion of  Prince  William  of  Denmark  from  Prince  and 
Princess  Christian,  with  whom  they  are  in  communica- 
tion. I  am  to  state  this  to  the  Greek  Government. 
I  have  told  Mavrocordato,  so  that  there  will  be  an 
end  to  all  secrecy  about  the  matter.  It  is  much  better 
that  there  should  be  none,  for,  unless  I  am  mistaken, 
as  soon  as  it  is  known  it  will  stop  for  a  time  all  the 
intrigues  that  are  going  on. 

March  24. — If  it  were  not  that  chien  echaude  craint 
eau  tiede  I  should  be  cheery  enough  just  now,  for  the 
name  of  the  Prince  has  been  admirably  received. 
People  began  to  come  to  see  me  before  I  had  done 
breakfast,  and  at  luncheon-time  I  had  not  five  minutes 
without  a  visitor.  One  and  all  gave  me  the  same 
story  of  the  extreme  satisfaction  exhibited  on  almost 


M.  BOUREE'S  EXCITEMENT  165 

all  sides.  One  of  the  newspapers  had  stupidly  an- 
nounced that  Prince  William  is  also  supported  by 
France,  and  I  was,  therefore,  prepared  to  find  Bouree 
in  a  state  of  agitation  about  it,  but  I  did  not  expect 
him  to  be  quite  in  the  excitement  in  which  he  was 
when  I  called,  and  it  would  not  surprise  me  to  be  told 
at  any  moment  that  he  was  out  of  his  mind.  This 
article  in  an  unofficial  paper  where  the  Press  is  as  free 
as  it  is  in  England  is  an  offence  that  he  cannot  get 
over.  What  is  to  be  thought  of  a  country  where  the 
Government  have  no  official  paper  in  which  such 
abominations  can  be  contradicted  %  He  had  called 
upon  the  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  to  deny  the 
thing  formally  in  the  Assembly;  but  the  Greeks  were 
mad,  absolutely  mad — their  whole  proceedings  about 
Prince  Alfred  showed  that  they  were  only  fit  for 
Bedlam.  These  and  such-like  were  the  ravings  he 
poured  out  to  me  in  the  presence  of  others,  but  in 
spite  of  all  provocation  I  did  what  I  could  to  soothe 
him,  and  told  him  he  would  only  succeed  in  giving  an 
undue  importance  to  the  papers.  He  has  not  heard 
a  word  from  his  Government  about  either  William 
of  Baden  or  William  of  Denmark,  but  he  will  never- 
theless work  to  the  very  utmost  of  his  power  against 
our  man.  He  gives  his  own  personal  opinion  strongly 
in  favour  of  Baden,  and  tells  people  he  cannot  believe 
the  Greeks  will  be  such  fools  as  to  throw  themselves 
into  the  arms  of  England,  and  at  her  bidding  elect  a 
"  child  of  fourteen." 

The  Prince  is  in  his  eighteenth  year. 

March  25. — I  have  got  a  telegram  very  hostile  to 
William  of  Baden,  to  whom  Her  Majesty's  Government 
say  the  Ionian  Islands  could  not  be  given  up.  I  have 
told  Bouree  that  Lord  Cowley  telegraphs  that  the 
Emperor  cordially  supported  the  Dane.  As  he  had 
sent  his  people  all  over  the  town  to  deny  the  fact  he 
will  look  rather  foolish  in  having  to  acknowledge  its 
truth.     He  pretends  that  I  have  no  right  to  say  a  word 


166  GREECE  [ises 

about  the  French,  and  that  if  Lord  Cowley  writes 
anything  I  am  not  to  allude  to  it  till  he,  Bouree,  has  a 
confirmation  of  it.  I  am  afraid  he  must  make  up  his 
mind  to  my  telling  just  as  much  or  as  little  of  my 
despatches  as  I  think  proper,  though,  of  course,  he 
need  not  be  guided  by  them. 

March  27. — A  newspaper  of  Russian  tendencies  was 
said  to  be  inclined  to  make  opposition  to  our  Hamlet, 
upon  which  it  was  intimated  to  the  editor  that,  if  he 
did  so,  his  house  would  certainly  be  pulled  about  his 
ears,  and  I  believe  the  argument  proved  convincing. 
Such  proceedings  are  not  strictly  correct,  but  they 
prove  that  the  current  is  setting  in  the  right  way. 

March  29. — The  telegrams  show  an  amusing  uncon- 
sciousness at  home  of  the  state  we  are  living  in  here. 
One  of  them  tells  me  to  communicate  confidentially 
to  the  French  and  Russian  Ministers  that  we  think 
Prince  William  of  Denmark  a  very  good  man  for  the 
throne. 

Confidentially !  when  we  have  been  talking  of  nothing 
else  for  the  last  five  or  six  days.  About  half  an  hour 
after  I  had  communicated  it,  by  order,  to  the  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs  there  were  not  ten  people  in  Athens 
who  did  not  know  it;  and  it  was  well  that  it  was 
known,  as  nothing  else  would  have  stopped  the  agents 
of  Aumale,  Baden,  Anarchy  and  Company,  all  of 
whom  were  very  busy  for  their  respective  objects. 
In  a  telegram  to-day  I  am  told  that  Aumale  would  not 
accept  unless  supported  by  Her  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment, and  it  has  been  intimated  to  him  that  Her 
Majesty's  Government  would  strongly  object  to  him. 

March  30. — This  has  been  a  great  day.  At  break- 
fast-time I  received  the  telegram  announcing  the  King 
of  Denmark's  consent.  At  eleven  I  communicated 
the  news  to  the  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  and  before 
two  Prince  William  was,  by  the  unanimous  acclama- 
tion of  the  Assembly,  elected  King  of  Greece  under  the 
name  of  George  the  First.     When  I  saw  Mavrocordato 


ELECTION  OF  KING  GEORGE  167 

I  told  him  of  the  nature  of  the  telegrams  and  what 
were  the  steps  Her  Majesty's  Government  thought  it 
would  be  best  to  take,  and  I  said  that  in  three  days 
the  messenger  would  bring  me  written  instructions, 
which  would  enable  us  better  to  see  the  way;  for  that 
at  present  we  knew  nothing  beyond  the  fact  that  the 
King  of  Denmark  had  given  his  consent. 

Mavrocordato  went  away  from  me  with  the  inten- 
tion of  communicating  this  to  his  colleagues,  and  of 
preparing  to  have  the  election  as  soon  as  the  messenger 
came  in. 

From  me  he  went  to  the  Council,  to  which  he  made 
known  what  I  had  received.  The  Council  then  desired 
their  old  President,  Balbi,  to  communicate  this  in- 
formation to  the  Assembly,  which  he  did,  but,  when 
he  had  done  so,  he  added:  "  Now,  gentlemen,  I  have 
hitherto  spoken  as  Minister,  but  you  will  allow  me  to 
add  a  few  words  as  a  simple  member  of  the  Assembly, 
and  as  an  old  man  who  has  the  good  of  his  country  at 
heart.  As  in  one  day  we  got  rid  of  King  Otho,  why, 
in  one  day,  should  we  not  accomplish  the  election  of 
his  successor  ?  An  admirable  choice  has  been  sug- 
gested to  us,  and  I  propose  that  we  should  at  once 
adopt  him  and  elect  him  King/5  Hereupon  there 
was  an  unanimous  expression  of  assent;  and  in  two 
minutes  the  thing  was  done.  The  Assembly  passed 
a  decree  in  three  articles — the  first  declaring  Prince 
Christian  William  Ferdinand  Adolphus  George  King 
of  the  Greeks,  under  the  title  of  George  the  First — the 
reason  for  this  being  that  William  is  not  a  Greek  name 
and  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  calendar;  the  second 
article  laid  down  that  his  children  are  to  be  brought 
up  in  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church;  the  third, 
that  a  deputation  should  be  sent  to  offer  him  the 
Crown. 

After  that  came  orders  for  a  thanksgiving  in  the 
cathedral,  illuminations,  etc.,  etc.  The  thing  may, 
perhaps,  have  the  appearance  of  having  been  done 


168  GREECE  [1863 

lightly,  but,  when  the  ball  was  once  set  rolling,  the 
public  impatience  was  such  that  nothing  could  with- 
stand it.  When  they  went  into  the  Assembly  the 
Ministers  had  not  the  slightest  idea  that  the  election 
was  going  to  be  carried  out  then;  but  there  was 
probably  not  a  man  in  Athens  who  had  not  made  up 
his  mind  that  Prince  William  was  to  be  elected,  and, 
that  being  so,  they  all  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  sooner  it  was  done  the  better.  The  wish  to  finish 
the  matter  quickly  was  increased  by  the  knowledge 
of  the  tricks  that  were  being  played  by  various  parties, 
and  by  Bouree  among  the  number. 

On  Saturday  evening  Grivas  went  to  him  with  several 
of  his  followers  and  told  him  they  wished  to  know 
what  he  thought  of  the  Danish  candidateship,  as  they 
wanted  to  regulate  their  conduct  accordingly.  To 
this  he  replied  that  he  had  received  instructions, 
conceived  in  very  cold  terms,  informing  him  that  the 
Emperor  was  favourable  to  it,  and  that,  as  Minister 
of  France,  he  could  not,  of  course,  hold  any  other 
language;  but  that,  as  an  individual  and  plain  M. 
Bouree,  he  had  no  hesitation  in  saying  he  thought  the 
choice  most  unfortunate,  and  that  the  Greeks  who  had 
the  good  of  their  country  at  heart  ought  with  the 
utmost  vigour  to  push  forward  Prince  William  of 
Baden,  whose  election  the  Emperor  would  certainly 
not  object  to.  This  was,  of  course,  taken  to  imply 
that  the  Emperor  had  given  a  mere  nominal  approval, 
and  really  wished  Baden  pushed  on,  and  the  French 
party  acted  accordingly.  The  next  day  came  his 
instructions  to  support  the  Dane,  and  as  he  was 
obliged  to  announce  this  publicly,  the  people  he  has 
been  misleading  are  indignant  with  him,  while  he  is 
the  laughing-stock  of  the  rest. 

April  1. — I  have  this  evening  got  a  telegram  from 
London  in  answer  to  the  announcement  of  the  election 
of  the  King.  Her  Majesty's  Government  are  de- 
lighted, and  Lord  Russell  says  that  my  special  mission 


TEEMINATION  OF  MISSION  169 

may  now  be  considered  terminated,  and  I  may  make 
my  preparations  for  leaving  Athens. 

April  2. — Was  there  ever  such  a  diplomatic  shuttle- 
cock as  I  am  ?  This  morning  came  a  telegram  saying 
it  would  be  very  useful  that  I  should  see  Prince 
Christian,  the  new  King's  father,  and  asking  if  I  could 
go  to  Copenhagen.  Of  course,  I  have  answered  that 
I  am  quite  ready,  and  must  rush  away  to  the  extreme 
north. 

April  7. — My  plans  are  again  changed  by  another 
telegram  from  the  Foreign  Office  telling  me  to  come  on 
to  Paris  by  Turin  as  soon  as  I  can.  I  am  glad  to  go 
that  way,  but  I  don't  like  the  hurried  summons  to 
Paris,  which  looks  as  if  there  were  some  hitch. 

April  9. — My  last  day  at  Athens. 

Corfu,  April  12. — The  letters  brought  by  the 
messenger  were  not  encouraging,  and  Lord  Cowley* 
fairly  says  that  he  thinks  we  shall  breakdown.  It 
seems  that  the  Danes  insist  on  the  abdication  of  King 
Otho  as  a  necessary  preliminary.  At  New  Corinth  the 
inhabitants  turned  out  to  do  me  honour,  and  a  spokes- 
man in  French  thanked  England,  and  myself  in 
particular,  for  all  we  had  been  doing  for  Greece.  I 
received  this  nattering  homage  in  an  omnibus,  screw- 
ing myself  gracefully  round  to  face  the  people,  and 
then  I  thanked  them  in  a  dignified  speech  out  of  my 
omnibus  window. 

Paris,  April  22. — Heard  nothing  about  our  Greek 
affairs  till  I  got  here  four  days  ago,  by  which  time 
things  had  begun  to  take  a  more  cheerful  look  than 
they  had  before  been  doing;  but  it  is  plain  that  the 
whole  thing  had  been  within  an  ace  of  breaking  down. 
The  Danes  seem  to  have  put  forward  all  kinds  of 
absurd  conditions. 

The  questions  to  be  arranged  are  now  reduced  to  one 
of  pounds,  shillings  and  pence,  about  which  there 

*  Second  Lord,  afterwards  the  First  Earl  Cowley,  then  British 
Ambassador  at  Paris. 


170  GREECE  [1863 

cannot  be  much  difficulty;  unless,  indeed,  the  Royal 
Dane  persists  in  requiring  that  a  good  revenue  should 
be  secured  to  him  in  the  event  of  the  Greeks  getting 
tired  of  him  as  they  did  of  Otho.  To  provide  a 
retiring  pension  is  a  new  feature  in  a  Civil  List. 

When  I  saw  Drouyn  he  betrayed  a  good  deal  of 
soreness  and  jealousy  still  remaining  against  the 
Greeks;  and  if  the  new  King  were  to  appoint  an 
English  Administration  (which  the  Greeks  were 
anxious  for  when  I  left  Athens)  it  would  excite  great 
sensitiveness  here. 

I  had  had  an  interesting  time  at  Athens,  and  not 
always  an  easy  part  to  play,  but  it  all  ended  well,  and 
we  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  the  King, 
elected  after  so  many  difficulties  and  in  such  a  strange 
manner,  has  not  disappointed  the  hopes  that  were 
entertained  of  him. 


CHAPTER  VII 

TURIN,  1863-1865 

[In  1863  when  Mr.  Elliot  reached  Turin  the  state  of  Italy- 
was  still  far  from  settled;  Cavour  had  died  in  June  1861 
worn  out  by  the  long  strain,  and  although  so  much  had  been 
achieved  patriotic  Italians  felt  acute  disappointment  at  their 
failure  to  complete  the  unification  of  Italy  and  proclaim 
Rome  as  the  capital  of  the  Kingdom.  This  failure  was  the 
source  of  considerable  difficulties  with  regard  to  the  choice  of 
a  capital.  Turin  was  unsuitable  for  many  reasons,  racial  as 
well  as  geographical,  the  sterner,  sturdier  northern  Italians 
not  being  looked  upon  with  much  sympathy  by  their  southern 
brethren.  Florence  was  ultimately  chosen  as  the  most  suitable 
capital  for  the  newly  constituted  Kingdom,  but,  as  was  to  be 
expected,  the  Piedmontese  felt  bitterly  aggrieved  at  the  loss 
of  the  Court,  while  the  Florentines  exhibited  no  enthusiasm 
at  an  honour  which  they  realised  would  be  only  temporary. 

After  relating  the  events  which  took  place  at  Turin  on  the 
transfer  of  the  capital  Mr.  Elliot  makes  no  allusion  to  the 
move  to  Florence,  where  in  1865  he  installed  the  Legation  in 
the  Palazzo  Boutourlin,  a  fine  house  in  the  Via  dei  Servi.  He 
remained  there  throughout  the  summer  of  1866,  and  wit- 
nessed the  liberation  of  Venetia  which,  as  he  remarks,  was 
secured  to  Italy  by  the  success  of  her  Prussian  ally  at  Konig- 
gratz,  in  spite  of  her  own  defeats  at  Custozza  and  Lissa.] 

In  October  1863,  about  six  months  after  my  return 
from  Greece,  I  was  appointed  Minister  at  Turin,  which 
was  at  that  time  the  seat  of  the  Italian  Government, 
and  I  found  everything  very  quiet  till  about  six  months 
later,  when  there  was  an  agitation  that  led  to  great 
results;  for  the  Pope,  Pius  IX.,  fell  into  a  state  of 
health  which  led  to  the  belief  that  his  death  would  not 
long  be  delayed,  when  an  attempt  would  certainly  be 
made  to  assert  the  right  of  the  Italians  to  Rome  as 

171 


172  TURIN  [1864 

their  capital;  and  as  Rome  was  still  occupied  by  a 
French  Army,  under  an  Emperor  whose  designs  were 
always  inscrutable,  the  Italian  Government  would 
find  itself  in  a  serious  dilemma. 

Moreover,  although  Italy  had  hitherto  acquiesced 
in  Turin  provisionally  remaining  the  capital,  it  had 
already  caused  so  much  discontent  that  a  change 
of  the  seat  of  Government  at  no  distant  date  was 
evidently  indispensable,  even  if  Rome  was  unat- 
tainable. 

In  June  1864  I  find  myself  writing  that  the  question 
of  the  capital  would  set  us  all  by  the  ears:  "that 
Florence  did  not  want  to  be  capital  even  if  the  other 
parts  of  the  country  would  agree  to  it;  that  Turin 
would  not  consent  to  Naples,  and  that  Naples  would 
never  make  up  its  mind  to  accept  Turin  as  a  per- 
manency/' Two  months  later  I  wrote  that "  everyone 
of  any  weight  recognises  that  the  country  cannot  go 
on  indefinitely,  or  even  long,  in  its  present  unsettled 
state,  and  what  are  the  chances  of  getting  out  of  it  as 
long  as  France  sets  her  face  against  it  ?  The  French 
agents  everywhere  declare  themselves  certain  that  the 
kingdom  of  Italy  must  break  up,  for  they  know  as 
well  as  their  master  that  he  has  only  doggedly  to 
persist  in  holding  his  present  position  in  Rome  in  order 
to  secure  this  result,  unless,  indeed,  he  were  to  fall 
out  with  Austria  and  help  Italy  to  walk  into  Venetia, 
which  would  keep  things  quiet  for  a  time,  and  then 
only  for  a  time. 

"  The  question  of  the  capital  will  certainly  become 
a  very  serious  one  before  long.  The  Sicilians  and 
Neapolitans  will  not  continue  to  put  up  with  Turin, 
and  Turin  is  now  every  day  growing  so  fast  and 
creating  such  immense  interests  about  the  town  that 
the  Piedmontese  party,  which  already  does  not  like 
the  thoughts  of  moving,  becomes  daily  more  and  more 
persuaded  that  the  present  capital  does  very  well 
and  may  continue  to  do  so  for  ever/' 


CONVENTION  ABOUT  ROME  173 

I  saw  that  the  case  was  very  urgent,  but  had  no 
expectation  that  within  a  month  we  should  see  the 
conclusion  of  the  famous  Convention,  which  was  not 
only  to  determine  the  removal  of  the  capital  from 
Turin  that  was  so  imperatively  called  for,  but  was  to 
fix  a  term  for  the  French  occupation  of  Rome. 

On  September  16  I  called  upon  Minghetti,*  the 
Prime  Minister,  who  at  once  began  by  saying  that  he 
had  something  of  importance  to  communicate.  He 
then  told  me  that  a  Convention  about  Rome  was  on 
the  point  of  being  signed  at  Paris.  That,  as  I  was 
aware,  negotiations  had  been  going  on,  at  first  through 
the  Marquis  Pepoli,  and  afterwards  through  General 
Menabrea,  Minister  of  Public  Works,  and  that  these 
had  resulted  in  an  agreement  on  the  part  of  the 
Emperor  to  withdraw  his  troops  from  Rome  in  two 
years  at  furthest;  while  the  King  of  Italy  engages 
himself  to  respect  the  Papal  territory,  and  neither  to 
attack  his  Holiness  nor  to  permit  him  to  be  attacked 
by  bands  of  volunteers.  He  agrees  to  take  upon  the 
kingdom  the  portion  of  the  Papal  debt  which  may  be 
calculated  as  belonging  to  those  parts  of  the  Papal 
States  already  annexed,  and  finally  he  declares  that  he 
will  remove  his  capital  from  Turin  to  Florence. 

When  there  had  seemed  to  be  an  opening  for  re- 
commencing a  negotiation  with  regard  to  Rome, 
Minghetti  determined,  he  said,  to  re-open  it  upon  the 
same  basis  as  that  of  the  last  proposals  of  Count 
Cavour,  which  were  the  same  as  those  now  obtained 
with  the  exception  of  the  change  of  capital;  but  the 
Emperor,  while  showing  every  inclination  to  come  to 
an  agreement,  said  it  was  impossible  for  him  now  to 
accept  the  identical  proposal  he  had  refused  to  Count 
Cavour,  and  it  was  therefore  necessary  to  find  some 
means  of  appeasing  the  public  opinion  of  France, 

*  Marco  Minghetti,  b.  1818,  d.  1886,  was  the  most  distinguished 
of  Cavour's  followers  and  successors.  Widely  esteemed  as  a 
scholar  as  well  as  a  courageous  and  successful  statesman. 


174  TURIN  [1804 

which  is  so  strongly  averse  to  the  unconditional 
abandonment  of  the  Pope.  The  Emperor  first  pro- 
posed that  the  French  troops  should  leave  Eome, 
keeping  only  an  insignificant  garrison  at  Civita 
Vecchia;  but  this  Minghetti  would  not  listen  to, 
saying  it  made  little  difference  to  him  whether  the 
occupying  troops  consisted  of  a  whole  corps  d'armee,  or 
of  a  corporal's  guard,  for  either  of  them  represented 
the  whole  French  army  and  nation.  So  that  sug- 
gestion would  not  do.  The  next  suggestion  of  the 
Emperor  was  that  the  King  of  Italy  should  solemnly 
bind  himself  to  renounce  for  ever  all  intention  of 
obtaining  Rome  as  his  capital.  This  again  Minghetti 
would  not  consent  to,  but  he  then  determined  to 
endeavour  to  persuade  the  King  to  express  his 
willingness  to  change  his  capital  to  Florence,  if  that 
would  obtain  the  withdrawal  of  the  French  troops. 

I  am  not,  however,  so  sure  when  the  King's  assent 
was  given,  and  do  not  feel  clear  that  the  question  was 
submitted  to  him  till  it  had  been  ascertained  that  on 
those  conditions  the  Emperor  would  bind  himself  to 
withdraw  his  troops;  but,  however  that  may  be,  it 
cost  the  King  an  immense  effort  to  consent  to  what  is 
to  him  a  very  heavy  sacrifice,  and  Minghetti  spoke 
highly  of  the  manner  in  which  he  made  it. 

He  wished  to  put  off  the  evil  day  as  long  as  possible, 
and  General  Menabrea  had  been  sent  a  second  time 
to  Paris  to  try  to  obtain  the  Emperor's  consent  to  the 
transfer  of  the  capital  not  taking  place  till  two  years 
after  the  withdrawal  of  the  French  troops;  but  this 
the  Emperor  would  not  agree  to,  and  the  Convention 
was  finally  settled  as  had  been  proposed. 

The  matter  had  been  kept  extraordinarily  secret, 
and  it  was  intended  that  it  should  remain  so  till  the 
meeting  of  the  Chambers,  which  were  at  once  to  be 
summoned.  Indeed,  I  believe  that  Drouyn  de  Lhuys 
knew  nothing  about  it  till  it  was  all  cut  and  dry  and 
the  Convention  nearly  ready  for  his  signature;  and 


CONVENTION  SIGNED  175 

it  is  certain  that  Malaret,  the  French  Minister  here, 
had  heard  nothing  of  it  for  two  days  after  it  was 
actually  signed,  and  after  I  had  announced  it  to  my 
Government. 

Minghetti  did  not  disguise  from  himself  the  gravity 
of  the  act,  but  he  is  satisfied  with  himself  and  fully 
calculated  on  the  approval  of  Lord  Russell,  who  had 
lately  nearly  frightened  Maffei  (Italian  Charge 
d'Affaires  in  London)  out  of  his  propriety  by  saying 
to  him  that  the  best  thing  Italy  could  do  would  be  to 
go  to  Florence,  as  it  cannot  get  to  Rome.  I  con- 
gratulated Minghetti  heartily,  feeling  that  a  great  step 
had  been  made  in  consolidating  the  Kingdom  of  Italy. 

So  far  everything  had  been  admirably  conducted, 
but  from  this  point  there  was  mismanagement  and  a 
series  of  blunders. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  the  secret  would 
remain  long  without  oozing  out,  and  it  might  have 
been  foreseen  that  it  would  produce  among  the  people 
of  Turin  an  outburst  of  indignation  against  which 
precautionary  measures  were  required;  but  none 
whatever  were  taken. 

Strangely  enough,  the  news  was  given  by  the  semi- 
official newspaper  Opinione,  and,  though  for  two  days 
there  was  violent  excitement  and  noisy  demonstrations, 
still  no  steps  were  taken  to  have  the  means  of  pre- 
venting the  further  disturbances  that  seemed  prob- 
able; and  the  whole  force,  in  addition  to  the  ordinary 
police,  that  the  Government  had  to  rely  upon  for 
keeping  order  consisted  of  three  companies  of  the  Line 
and  a  corps  of  f  Eleves  Carabiniers,"  a  set  of  quite 
young  men,  almost  boys,  making  between  them  a 
total  of  1,300  men,  the  ordinary  garrison  being  left  at 
the  manoeuvres  of  S.  Maurice. 

Noisy  mobs  continued  to  parade  through  the  streets 
without  anything  serious  occurring  till  the  evening 
of  the  third  day,  when  the  gendarmes,  almost  without 
provocation,  and  as  was  said  without  orders,  fired  upon 


176 


TURIN 


[1864 


them  and  killed  several,  including  some  harmless 
spectators  and  women.  This  naturally  increased  the 
anger  of  the  people,  and  the  next  day  the  demonstra- 
tions became  more  threatening,  and,  though  the  better 
classes  did  not  actually  take  part  in  them,  all  nobles, 
manufacturers,  and  shopkeepers  made  no  secret  of 
their  sympathies,  but  paid  their  workmen  their  wages 
and  gave  them  a  holiday  that  they  might  go  into  the 
streets.  However,  as  by  this  time  18,000  troops  had 
been  brought  into  the  town,  there  was  ample  means  of 


o 

-S3 
CO 


.2      Colonnade.   Soldiers.    Colonnade. 
> 

ooooooooooooooooooo 


CD 

CO 

o 


CD 


Via  Nuova. 


cS 


CD 

EH 
go" 

eg 

-r-l 


Piazza 


Statue. 


San  Carlo. 


ooooooooooooooooooo 

Colonnade.    Soldiers.  Colonnade. 


CD 

«a 

I— < 

< 

c3 
> 


Via  Nuova. 


preventing  any  outbreak;  but  they  were  under  the 
command  of  General  Delia  Rocco,  a  Piedmontese 
by  birth  and  in  sympathy,  who  showed  that  he  shared 
the  discontent  of  his  countrymen  by  never  once  ap- 
pearing in  the  streets  with  his  men;  and  he  must  be 
held  responsible  for  the  loss  of  life  that  occurred  in 
the  Piazza  San  Carlo  on  the  evening  of  the  22nd,  through 
the  idiotic  way  in  which  the  men  were  posted  on  three 
sides  of  the  square,  in  the  centre  of  v/hich  a  disorderly 
crowd  was  making  a  hostile  demonstration  against  the 
Questura,  in  front  of  which  were  posted  the  gendarmes, 


SOLDIERS  FIRE  ON  THE  PEOPLE       177 

who,  without  waiting  to  be  attacked,  fired  upon  the 
people;  and  as,  of  course,  their  bullets  fell  among  the 
soldiers  along  one  of  the  sides,  these,  fancying  them- 
selves attacked,  returned  the  fire  and  killed,  in  ad- 
dition to  rioters  in  the  centre,  several  of  their  comrades 
posted  opposite. 

I  was  on  the  spot  a  very  few  minutes  later  and  before 
the  dead  had  been  removed,  but  I  could  never  learn 
the  number  killed,  though  there  certainly  were  a  good 
many,  and  not  one  of  them  by  the  people,  who  did  not 
use  firearms,  or,  indeed,  any  arms  at  all.  It  was  a 
thoroughly  disgraceful  business,  but  there  was  no 
more  serious  disturbance. 

The  next  day  Minghetti  told  me  that  the  King  had 
just  dismissed  him  and  his  colleagues.     His  Majesty 
had  hinted  that  he  would  like  them  to  resign;  but  this 
Minghetti  positively  refused  to  do,  saying  he  was 
quite  ready  to  carry  through  what  he  had  begun,  and 
that  it  should  not  be  said  that  he  ran  away  before 
difficulties    which    he    felt    perfectly    confident    of 
meeting;  that  if  His  Majesty  chose  to  exercise  his 
constitutional  right  of  dismissing  his  Ministers,  he 
could,  of  course,  do  so,  but  the  act  must  be  his  own. 
Thereupon  the  King  asked  for  the  seals,  and  General 
Lamarmora,  who,  though  a  Piedmontese  was  favour- 
able  to   the   Convention,    was   appointed.    He   en- 
deavoured to  get  Ricasoli  to  join  his  Government, 
but  the  great  Florentine  baron  would  not   do   so, 
although  he  entirely  approved  of  the  Convention  and 
of  the  transfer  of  the  capital;  regretting  it,  however, 
for  the  sake  of  Florence,  which  will  have  to  go  through 
the  same  fate  as  Turin  when  it  is  ultimately  moved  to 
Rome.     Ricasoli  also  called  the  late  events  at  Turin 
"  Providential,"  as  being  all  that  was  required  to 
render    all    Italy    unanimously    favourable    to    the 
Convention. 

The  ill-humour  of  the  Turinese  did  not  pass  quickly 
over,  and  for  many  months  afterwards  they  did  not 

13 


178  TURIN  [1866 

scruple  to  exhibit  their  resentment  against  the  King 
and  the  French  for  the  Convention  they  had  signed, 
in  which  their  interests  had  been  subordinated  to 
those  of  the  rest  of  Italy;  and  in  the  course  of  the 
winter  they  had  an  opportunity  of  showing  how 
general  this  feeling  was  from  among  the  highest 
nobility  down  to  the  lowest  of  the  working  classes. 
During  the  Carnival,  on  the  occasion  of  a  ball  given 
by  the  King  an  immense  crowd  collected  near  the 
Palace  with  the  object  of  deterring  people  from  going 
to  it.  They  did  not  interfere  with  us,  and  when  our 
coachman  driving  a  pair  of  spirited  English  horses 
drove  smartly  on,  the  crowd  opened  and  we  had  no 
difficulty;  but  the  carriage  of  the  French  Minister  and 
his  wife  had  the  windows  smashed  before  they  got 
through.  The  great  ball-room  was  a  curious  sight, 
for  it  was  nearly  empty,  and  all  the  places  at  the  upper 
end  reserved  for  the  great  people  were  vacant;  and, 
to  prevent  the  part  where  the  King  was  to  be  from 
being  entirely  deserted,  persons  from  among  the  few 
who  were  at  the  lower  end  of  the  room,  and  who  had 
no  social  standing,  had  to  be  brought  up  to  make 
a  show.  Excepting  those  obliged  by  their  official 
position,  there  were  literally  none  of  the  good  Turinese 
families. 

Another  demonstration  of  the  same  kind  was  made 
at  a  ball  given  at  the  French  Legation,  at  which  also 
no  one  attended;  and,  to  make  the  abstention  more 
marked,  at  a  ball  we  gave  a  few  days  later  there  was 
hardly  a  person  invited  who  did  not  put  in  an  ap- 
pearance. The  intention  of  being  offensive  to  our 
French  colleague  was  so  marked  that  we  did  not 
choose  that  it  should  be  repeated,  and  found  some 
pretext  for  putting  off  a  second  ball  for  which  the 
invitations  were  already  out;  but,  although  the  ill- 
humour  of  the  Turinese  continued  undiminished,  they 
allowed  the  transfer  of  the  capital  to  be  carried  out 
during  the  summer  without  any  further  disturbance. 


WAR  179 

In  June  of  the  following  year,  1866,  the  war  of 
Prussia  and  Italy  against  Austria  broke  out,  and  in 
very  few  weeks  ended  with  vast  results  to  both  of  the 
allies,  although  with  little  glory  to  the  Italians.  At 
Custozza  the  Austrians  obtained  a  complete  victory 
over  their  army  under  Cialdini,  while  off  Lissa,* 
Admiral  Tegethoff,  with  his  wooden  ships,  inflicted  a 
shameful  defeat  upon  their  ironclads  commanded  by 
Persano,  who,  by  a  well-merited  though  mild  sentence 
of  a  court-martial,  was  dismissed  from  the  Service 
and  deprived  of  his  decorations.  But  the  success  of 
her  Prussian  ally  at  Koniggratz  secured  for  Italy  all 
she  could  have  hoped  for  from  the  most  brilliant 
victory  of  her  own,  for  it  obliged  the  Austrians  to 
withdraw  their  troops  from  Venetia,  which  they  made 
over  to  the  Emperor  Napoleon,  who  passed  it  on  to 
King  Victor  Emmanuel,  whose  kingdom  then  com- 
prised the  whole  of  Italy  with  the  sole  exception  of 
Rome  and  the  small  portion  of  the  Papal  States  that 
had  been  left  to  the  Pope. 

*  July  20,  1866. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

TURKEY— I.,  1867-1876 

[When  Mr.  Elliot  succeeded  Lord  Lyons  at  Constantinople 
in  1867  the  condition  of  Turkey  was  apparently  prosperous. 
Quiet  reigned  in  the  provinces,  with  the  exception  of  Crete, 
where  a  serious  rebellion  had  broken  out ;  the  hardy  indepen- 
dent islanders  had  never  been  fully  conquered  by  the  Turks, 
and  secret  assistance  from  Greece  enabled  them  to  hold  out 
until  the  blockade  of  the  island  by  the  Turkish  fleet  allowed 
Omar  Pasha  to  subdue  them  for  the  time  being.  Under  the 
enlightened  rule  of  Aali,  Fuad*  and  Midhatf  Pashas  Turkey 
had  made  substantial  progress  since  the  Crimean  War,  pro- 
gress far  less  rapid  than  that  of  Western  Europe,  but  yet 
sufficient  to  justify  the  hope  that  the  country  had  entered  on 
the  upward  path.  How  these  hopes  came  to  be  disappointed 
will  be  shown  in  the  following  pages,  but  attention  may  at 
once  be  drawn  to  two  points  which  certainly  contributed 
materially  to  the  rapid  disintegration  of  the  Empire. 

The  first  in  order  of  events  was  the  emancipation  of  the 
Bulgarian  Church  from  the  authority  of  the  Greek  Patriarch. 
To  most  readers  this  will  probably  appear  a  purely  theological 
question,  but  it  is  not  so,  doctrine  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 
The  status  of  the  Greek  Patriarch  at  the  Porte  was  a  recog- 
nised and  a  high  one,  he  was  consulted  on  points  touching  his 
community  and  his  power  over  his  flock  was  considerable. 
Advantage  of  this  position  was  taken  by  the  Patriarchs,  who 
were  mostly  of  Greek  birth,  to  introduce  the  Greek  language 
into  the  Bulgarian  liturgy.  Greek  priests  received  promotion, 
and  Greek  culture  began  to  supersede  Slavonic  ideas  and 
literature.  The  bitterness  engendered  by  these  usurpations 
of  power  on  the  part  of  the  Patriarchate  was  so  intense  that  a 
section  of  the  Bulgarian  Christians  even  contemplated  union 
with  Koine  as  a  method  of  emancipation  from  the  rule  of  the 
Phanar.  %    At  length  the  Porte  interfered  in  the  quarrel,  and 

*  See  note,  p.  184.  f  See  note,  p.  227. 

J  The  name  of  the  Greek  quarter  on  the  Stamboul  side  of  the 
Golden  Horn,  specially  allotted  after  the  fall  of  Constantinople. 

180 


INTRODUCTION  181 

in  1870  issued  a  firman  establishing  an  Exarchate  in  Bulgaria, 
though  the  election  of  the  first  Exarch  did  not  take  place  until 
1872.  Nationalist  feeling  in  Bulgaria  received  an  immense 
stimulus  from  this  triumph  of  the  Slavonic  over  the  Greek 
element  in  the  Church,  and  General  Ignatiew,  who  had 
throughout  encouraged  the  disaffection  of  the  Bulgarians 
towards  the  Greek  influence  in  their  Church,  was  not  slow  to 
take  advantage  of  the  situation.  Henceforth  Slavonic  rather 
than  Greek  culture  became  the  rule,  and  an  undercurrent  of 
unrest  disturbed  the  otherwise  prosperous  province. 

The  second  point  to  which  allusion  has  been  made  is  that  of 
the  repudiation  of  the  Turkish  Debt.  This  discreditable 
transaction  was  brought  about  in  1875  by  the  Grand  Vizier 
Mahmoud  Nedim  Pasha,  a  man  so  completely  dominated  by 
General  Ignatiew  that  he  was  known  in  Turkish  circles  as 
:'  Mahmoudo/f."  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  dishonest 
repudiation  of  her  debts  contributed  to  alienate  all  sympathy 
from  Turkey,  and  added  to  the  violence  of  the  outcry  occa- 
sioned by  the  "  Bulgarian  Atrocities." 

The  Russian  point  of  view  in  regard  to  the  state  of  the 
Balkans  in  1875  is  well  summed  up  by  M.  Nekludoff  in  his 
Diplomatic  Reminiscences,  p.  40.  "  Balkan  troubles  begin 
in  1875  with  the  Herzegovinian  insurrection,  secretly  sup- 
ported, if  not  actually  fomented,  by  Austria.  The  Emperor 
Alexander  II.  and  Russian  public  opinion  wish  to  obliterate 
completely  the  recollection  of  the  Crimean  campaign,  to  cover 
the  Russian  arms  with  new  glory,  and  especially  to  resume  the 
illustrious  part  of  Defenders  of  the  Christian  Faith  in  the  East. 
The  influence  of  the  aged  Prince  Gortchakoff,  who  opposes 
these  projects,  is  definitely  on  the  wane,  and  the  Emperor 
frames  his  own  policy — allowing  for  that  of  his  Chancellor — 
with  his  Ambassadors,  Ignatiew  in  Constantinople,  Count 
Peter  Schuvaloff  in  London,  and  M.  Novikoff  in  Vienna. 
Disorders  break  out  in  Bulgaria  followed  by  massacres, 
horrible  as  ever,  but  this  time  exaggerated  rather  than  sup- 
pressed by  the  Press  and  European  diplomacy.  A  palace 
revolution  in  Constantinople  and  a  heated  struggle  for  in- 

Tke  Patriarchate  and  the  residences  of  the  principal  Greek 
families  were  situated  there,  and  although  by  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  most  of  the  wealthy  Greeks  had  migrated  to 
Pera,  where  the  Embassies  and  the  abodes  of  foreign  residents  are 
situated,  the  name  Phanariole  continued  in  use  to  designate  the 
descendants  of  the  Byzantine  families  in  distinction  from  later 
immigrants. 


182  TURKEY  [is67 

fluence  between  the  Embassies  of  Russia  and  Great  Britain. 
Serbo-Turkish  war  and  enormous  enthusiasm  in  Russia  for 
the  Serbian  cause,  which  is  completely  mistaken  for  the  whole 
Slav  cause.  Conference  at  Reichstadt,  at  which,  in  order  to 
guarantee  the  neutrality,  or  even  under  certain  conditions 
the  co-operation  of  Austria  in  a  war  in  the  East  which  we  feel 
to  be  imminent,  we  consent  beforehand  to  the  Austrian 
occupation  of  Bosnia,  Herzegovina,  and  even  the  Sanjak  of 
Novibazar;  in  other  words,  we  leave  Serbia  herself  within  the 
sphere  of  Austro-Hungarian  influence.  Hence  the  absolute 
necessity  for  our  policy  to  found  a  new  autonomous  Slav  State 
in  the  Balkans  which  would  constitute  a  sphere  for  Russian 
influence." 

That  the  Principalities  of  Servia  and  Roumania  were  prac- 
tically independent  was  hardly  realized  in  1875  by  the  general 
public  in  England.  Autonomy  had  been  granted  to  Servia 
in  1830,  the  Turks  still  retaining  garrisons  in  the  fortresses. 
In  March  1867,  these  garrisons  were  withdrawn  on  the  advice 
of  England,  and  as  regards  the  internal  affairs  of  the  country 
independence  under  the  Obrenovich  dynasty  was  complete. 
The  risings  in  Herzegovina  and  Bosnia,  the  war  with  Monte- 
negro, and  the  revolt  in  Bulgaria,  as  well  as  the  secret  prompt- 
ings from  Russia,  brought  about  the  Servian  declaration  of 
war  against  Turkey  in  1875,  and  the  unexpected  victories 
gained  by  the  Turks  entailed  the  ultimate  declaration  of  war 
by  Russia  after  the  abortive  Conference  at  Constantinople. 

The  case  of  Roumania  was  somewhat  different.  The  Voi- 
vodes  and  Hospodars  of  Wallachia  and  Moldavia  had  been 
alternately  friends  and  foes  of  Turkey,  often  furnishing  con- 
tingents to  the  Ottoman  forces  in  their  invasions  of  Hungary, 
and  these  provinces  were  never  completely  dominated.  In 
1829  at  the  Peace  of  Adrianople,  the  Turks  undertook  to 
refrain  from  erecting  any  fortifications  on  the  Wallachian  side 
of  the  Danube,  and  the  Treaty  of  Paris  in  1856  guaranteed  all 
the  existing  privileges  and  the  complete  independence  of  the 
country  with  regard  to  internal  administration,  though  a 
nominal  suzerainty  was  maintained  by  the  Sultan.  So 
nominal  was  this  suzerainty  that  good  friends  of  Turkey 
repeatedly  urged  the  Porte  to  grant  the  Prince  of  Roumania 
complete  independent  sovereignty  before  war  was  declared  by 
Russia,  who  would  in  that  case  be  forced  to  violate  the  terri- 
tory of  a  neutral  country  in  order  to  invade  Turkey  in  Europe 
by  land,  while  any  pretext  for  Roumania  to  enter  the  lists 
would  be  removed.] 


EMPEROR'S  SUGGESTION  TO  SULTAN    183 

I  was  made  Ambassador  to  Turkey  in  1867,  just  before 
the  Sultan  Abdul  Aziz's  visit  to  France  and  England, 
which  was  memorable  as  being  the  first  that  a  Turkish 
Sultan  had  ever  paid  to  a  foreign  Sovereign. 

He  was  well  satisfied  with  his  reception  in  London, 
but  very  indignant  at  the  manner  he  had  been  treated 
by  the  Emperor  Napoleon  at  Paris,  where  the  Great 
Exhibition  was  being  held,  which  was  given  out  as 
the  chief  inducement  for  his  visit  to  Europe.  He  was 
accompanied  by  Fuad  Pasha,*  his  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs,  an  exceptionally  able  man  and  astute  states- 
man, who  officiated  as  his  principal  interpreter. 

A  formidable  insurrection  in  Crete  was  then  at  its 
height,  and  one  fine  day  the  Emperor  in  a  conversa- 
tion with  the  Sultan,  suddenly  and  without  preamble, 
suggested  to  him  that  the  best  thing  he  could  do  would 
be  to  make  over  the  island  to  the  Greeks,  by  whom 
the  insurrection  had  been  fomented  and  was  kept  alive, 
and  the  wrath  that  this  proposal  produced  in  the 
Sultan's  mind  can  easily  be  imagined;  but  he  smothered 
his  indignation  for  the  moment,  only  desiring  Fuad 
Pasha  to  make  a  suitable  reply,  which  the  latter  did  by 
telling  the  Emperor  that  the  Sultan  said  that  his 
subjects  would  not  understand  it  if  they  found  that 
their  Sovereign,  after  going  to  Paris  to  see  all  the 
marvellous  inventions  in  the  Exhibition,  returned  to 
Constantinople  with  an  instrument  for  lopping  off 
one  of  his  own  provinces. 

When  the  interview  between  the  two  Sovereigns  was 
over,  however,  and  the  Sultan  had  got  back  to  his 
apartment,  his  rage  broke  out  with  fury :  he  would  not 
stay  a  day  in  Paris  after  being  subjected  to  such  an 

*  B.  1815.  Began  life  as  an  Army  surgeon;  entered  the  civil 
service  in  1836,  and  served  at  various  diplomatic  posts;  attended 
the  Paris  Conference  in  1856,  and  was  five  times  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs.  Accompanied  Sultan  Abdul  Aziz  to  Paris  and 
London,  but  was  disgraced  on  his  return  to  Turkey,  and  died  in 
1869.  Was  noted  for  his  wit  and  readiness  in  repartee,  and  for 
his  liberal  and  pro-English  sentiments. 


184  TURKEY  [1867 

insult;  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  suppose  that  the 
Emperor  could  have  made  such  a  proposal  without 
some  encouragement  from  Fuad  Pasha,  who  was  a 
traitor  and  must  be  instantly  dismissed,  and  he 
telegraphed  to  this  effect  to  Aali  Pasha,*  the  Grand 
Vizier  at  Constantinople. 

Aali  in  reply  entreated  his  Imperial  Master  not  to 
do  anything  to  cause  a  public  scandal  likely  to  create 
a  misunderstanding  with  France,  but  when  he  got 
back  to  Constantinople  he  could  deal  with  Fuad  as  he 
thought  proper;  and  the  Sultan  allowed  the  affair 
to  blow  over,  not  even  dismissing  Fuad  on  his  return 
to  Turkey,  though  he  never  afterwards  regarded  him 
with  favour. 

When  I  arrived  in  Turkey  in  the  autumn  of  1807, 
the  insurrection  in  Crete  had  been  going  on  for  a  year 
and  a  half,  kept  alive,  as  I  have  said,  by  the  assistance 
received  by  the  insurgents  from  Greece,  and  also  from 
the  Russian  man-of-war  cruisers.  The  Greek  Govern- 
ment openly  encouraged  the  enrolment  of  large  bodies 
of  volunteers  from  all  parts  of  Greece,  who  were 
equipped,  armed,  and  furnished  with  supplies  of  all 
kinds,  and  conveyed  to  Crete  in  fast  steamers,  which 
ran  the  Turkish  blockade,  and  one  of  these  blockade- 
runners  even  belonged  to  the  Greek  Government. 
The  prison  doors  were  opened  to  the  brigands  and  other 
criminals  confined  in  them  on  condition  of  their  going 
to  Crete  to  join  the  insurgents;  and  then  it  was  that 
the  Greek  Minister,  on  being  reproached  for  having 
liberated  some  notorious  malefactors,  excused  himself 
by  the  famous  declaration  that  it  was  sometimes 
"  difficult  to  distinguish  between  the  brigands  and 
patriots,"  and  it  was  some  of  the  "  patriots  "  thus 

*  B.  1815.  Was  five  times  Grand  Vizier;  Regent  of  Turkey 
in  1867  during  the  Sultan's  visit  to  France  and  England.  A 
zealous  reformer,  he  was  disgraced  in  1870  through  the  influence 
of  General  Ignatiew  and  replaced  by  the  venal  and  retrograde 
Mahmoud  Nedim.     He  died  in  1871. 


CRETAN  REVOLUTION  185 

released  who  perpetrated  the  murder  of  Herbert, 
Vyner,  and  their  companions  at  Marathon. 

The  insurgents  had  been  driven  to  mountain  fast- 
nesses, from  which  it  was  difficult  to  dislodge  them, 
but  where  they  could  not  long  have  maintained  them- 
selves if  provisions  had  not  been  sent  to  them  from 
abroad.  Even  as  it  was  they  were  hardly  pressed  for 
food,  and  would  have  had  to  give  in  if  the  Russian 
ships  of  war  had  not  come  to  their  help,  both  secretly 
by  furnishing  them  with  supplies  and  openly  by 
reducing  the  number  of  mouths  to  be  fed,  by  carry- 
ing away  the  women  and  children,  the  old  men  and 
other  non-combatants,  who,  to  the  number  of  some 
thousands,  were  maintained  near  Athens  at  the 
public  cost. 

In  the  course  of  a  conversation  one  dav  with  Aali 
Pasha,  the  Grand  Vizier,  when  he  had  been  expatiating 
on  the  perfectly  open  and  undisguised  assistance  the 
Greek  Government  were  giving  to  the  insurgents,  I  let 
drop  the  remark  that  I  wondered  he  continued  to 
tolerate  it. 

He  fixed  his  wonderfully  expressive  great  eyes  upon 
me  for  a  moment,  and  then  asked  me  what  my  Govern- 
ment wTould  say  if  he  took  steps  to  recall  the  Greeks 
to  their  international  obligations;  and  my  answer 
was  that  I  did  not  know  what  my  Government  might 
sav,  but  I  did  knowT  that  their  Ambassador  would  tell 
them  that,  in  his  opinion,  the  Porte  was  fully  justified 
in  adopting  measures  to  put  a  stop  to  what  was 
going  on. 

Nothing  more  was  then  said,  but  in  a  few  days  it 
was  announced  that,  unless  the  Greek  Government 
promised  to  behave  better,  their  Minister  at  Con- 
stantinople would  have  his  passports  sent  to  him, 
and  all  the  Greeks  in  Turkey  told  to  leave  the  country ; 
at  the  same  time  Admiral  Hobart  Pasha  *  was  to  go  to 

*  The  Hon.  Augustus  Charles  Hobart  Hampden,  third  son  of 
the  sixth  Earl  of  Buckinghamshire,  b.  1822,  d.  1886.     Author  of 


186  TURKEY  [1867 

Crete  with  a  strong  squadron  to  see  that  the  Greek 
cruisers  observed  a  proper  neutrality. 

This  led  to  the  first  of  my  passages  of  arms  with 
General  Ignatiew,*  of  which  we  had  afterwards  so 
many;  the  Greek  Minister  (Delyanni)  came  to  me  to 
ask  my  advice,  saying  that  the  Russian  Ambassador 
was  recommending  him  to  disregard  the  menace  of  the 
Turkish  Government,  which  was  a  mere  piece  of  bluster 
that  need  not  disturb  him :  what  did  I  think  about  it  ? 

I  said  that  my  opinion  differed  entirely  from  that 
of  the  General ;  that  I  was  convinced  the  Porte  would 
act  as  it  said,  and,  if  he  did  not  wish  to  see  the 
threatened  measures  carried  out,  he  would  do  well 
to  lose  no  time  in  advising  his  Government  to  observe 
the  neutrality  they  were  at  present  so  openly  violating. 

Unluckily  for  him  and  for  the  Greeks,  he  took 
General  Ignatiew's  advice,  and  when  his  passports 
were  sent  to  him  he  came  to  me  complaining  bitterly 
of  having  been  so  much  deluded  by  the  General,  and 
by  finding  that  the  Porte  was  so  universally  considered 

Never  Caught,  an  autobiographical  story  of  blockade  running  in 
the  American  Civil  War.  Entered  the  Royal  Navy  in  1836,  and 
eventually  the  Turkish  Navy.  Was  raised  to  the  rank  of  Pasha 
and  made  Admiral  of  the  Turkish  fleet  for  his  services  during  the 
Cretan  rising ;  his  name  was  then  removed  from  the  British  Navy 
List,  but  was  afterwards  restored.  He  commanded  the  Ottoman 
fleet  against  Russia  in  1878,  when  his  name  was  again  struck  off 
by  the  British  Admiralty  only  to  be  replaced  a  second  time. 

*  Nicolaus  Pavlovitch  Ignatiew,  the  Russian  Ambassador 
at  Constantinople,  was  born  in  1832;  first  distinguished  himself 
in  China  during  the  unquiet  years  between  1856  and  1864,  and 
succeeded  in  obtaining  from  China  many  concessions  to  Russia. 
Was  appointed  to  Constantinople  in  1864,  and  remained  there 
until  the  break-up  of  the  Conference  in  December  1876.  By 
his  thorough  knowledge  of  Orientals,  combined  with  remarkable 
ability  and  unscrupulousness,  he  gained  great  influence  at  the 
Porte,  though  known  by  the  public  as  the  "  Father  of  Lies,"  and 
greatly  disliked  by  the  Liberal  elements  in  both  Turkish  and 
Greek  circles.  In  1881  he  succeeded  Loris  Melikoff  as  Minister 
of  the  Interior,  but  failing  signally  in  that  capacity,  was  dismissed 
by  the  Czar  and  died  in  obscurity. 


HOB  ART  PASHA  187 

justified  in  the  course  it  was  adopting  that  not  a  single 
Government  raised  a  voice  to  protest  against  it.  General 
Ignatiew,  however,  did  his  best  to  prevent  the  depar- 
ture of  Admiral  Hobart  Pasha  to  the  Turkish  squadron 
at  Crete,  but  was  amusingly  baffled  by  the  Admiral. 

Hobart,  who  had  been  a  successful  blockade-runner 
under  the  name  of  Captain  Roberts  in  the  American 
Secession  War,  and  had  published  an  account  of  his 
adventures  in  a  little  volume  with  the  title  of  Never 
Caught ;  he  had  made  a  good  deal  of  money  by  his 
venture,  and  took  it  to  St.  Petersburg,  where  he  put 
his  gains  into  some  Russian  speculation  which  turned 
out  so  disastrously  that  he  had  to  make  a  hurried 
retreat  from  the  country,  leaving,  it  was  said,  large 
debts  behind  him ;  and  he  then  came  to  Constantinople, 
where  he  contrived  to  get  himself  appointed  to  com- 
mand the  Turkish  fleet. 

Ignatiew,  hearing  that  he  was  about  to  start  to  watch 
the  Greek  cruisers,  and  being  anxious  to  hinder  him, 
bethought  himself  of  the  Russian  debts,  and  an  ap- 
plication to  detain  him  to  answer  for  them  was  made 
to  our  Consulate;  but  Hobart,  getting  wind  of  it, 
immediately  sailed,  after  leaving  a  card  on  the 
Russian  Ambassador  along  with  a  copy  of  his  Never 
Caught.  So  at  least  ran  the  story,  which,  whether  true 
or  imaginary,  was  universally  believed  and  caused 
much  amusement. 

The  effect  of  the  sudden  energy  of  the  Porte  was 
instantaneous  and  complete.  The  Greek  Government 
became  convinced  that  the  patience  of  the  Porte  was 
exhausted,  and  that  it  could  no  longer  be  trifled  with, 
and  also  that  no  other  Government  was  inclined  to 
take  their  part  in  a  quarrel  in  which  they  were  so 
manifestly  in  the  wrong.  The  assistance  from  outside 
being  cut  off,  the  insurgents  at  once  threw  up  the  game : 
the  native  Cretans  went  back  to  their  usual  occupa- 
tions, and  the  foreign  volunteers  left  the  island,  which 
within  a  fortnight  was  restored  to  perfect  tranquillity. 


188  TURKEY  [i860 

An  insurrection  that  without  foreign  assistance 
could  not  possibly  lead  to  anything  but  suffering  and 
loss  of  life,  which  had  lasted  above  a  year,  subsided 
at  once  when  it  was  found  that  the  European  Govern- 
ments would  keep  their  "hands  off";  and  the  lesson 
the  Greeks  had  got  led  to  the  establishment  of  better 
relations  between  them  and  Turkey  than  had  prevailed 
for  many  years,  to  the  very  great  chagrin  of  General 
Ignatiew,  who  was  never  happy  except  when  trouble 
was  brewing  which  he  could  put  his  finger  into ;  and  he 
had  to  wait  eight  years  before  the  time  came  in  which 
he  could  distinguish  himself  in  the  field  of  intrigue 
in  which  he  delighted  and  for  which  he  was  so 
admirably  fitted. 

In  the  autumn  of  1869  I  was  sent  to  Egypt  for  the 
solemn  opening  of  the  Suez  Canal,  at  which  many 
countries  had  more  exalted  representatives,  such  as 
the  Empress  Eugenie  for  France,  the  Emperor  Francis 
Joseph  for  Austria-Hungary,  and  Prince  Henry  of  the 
Netherlands  for  Holland. 

The  canal,  which  has  proved  of  so  vast  a  benefit  to 
England,  had  been  conceived  by  Lesseps  under  the 
conviction  that  it  would  deal  a  fatal  blow  to  our 
carrying  trade  with  India  and  China,  and  that 
Marseilles  would  replace  London  as  the  entrepot  of 
the  world  for  all  Eastern  produce.  He  went  about 
France  enlarging  upon  this  theme,  and  the  subscrip- 
tions he  got  from  his  countrymen  were  given  under  the 
impression  of  the  injury  the  canal  would  do  to  a  rival 
whom  many  of  them  hated,  and  of  whom  all  of  them 
were  jealous. 

Lord  Palmerston's  ill-judged  opposition  to  the 
scheme  only  stimulated  the  anxiety  of  the  French  to 
carry  it  out.  When  it  was  completed,  they  and  Lesseps 
in  particular  had  a  right  to  exult  in  the  triumph  over 
what  was  universally  considered  the  selfish  policy  of 
England  in  opposing  a  magnificent  work  for  advancing 
the  commerce  of  the  world. 


ISMAIL  PASHA  189 

The  Khedive  Ismail  Pasha  had  always  relied  upon 
the  French  in  his  efforts  to  shake  off  the  authority 
of  the  Porte,  which,  under  existing  arrangements, 
had  in  some  degree  restricted  his  extravagance  by 
limiting  the  amount  of  his  military  and  naval  forces, 
and  by  denying  him  the  right  of  contracting  foreign 
loans  without  the  sanction  of  the  Sultan ;  and  with  the 
encouragement  of  France — to  his  own  ultimate  ruin, 
as  was  afterwards  proved — he  succeeded  in  getting 
many  of  the  restrictions  removed.  When  he  found 
himself  free  to  contract  loans  as  he  thought  proper 
there  was  no  limit  to  his  extravagance,  and  the 
public  debt,  which  was  to  a  large  extent  held  in 
France,  increased  so  rapidly  that  the  clamour  of  the 
French  bondholders,  who  found  their  investments 
imperilled  by  the  inability  of  Egypt  to  pay  their 
dividends,  brought  about  the  interference  of  their 
Government,  which  culminated  in  June  1879  in  the 
deposition  of  the  Khedive,  their  former  spoilt  child. 

He  knew  that  he  could  not  achieve  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  Sultan  at  which  he  was  aiming  without 
the  countenance  of  France,  and  he  expended  fabulous 
sums  in  order  to  secure  it.  There  was  hardly  a 
newspaper  in  Paris  that  was  not  largely  subsidised, 
and  all  the  men  such  as  De  Morny,  Fleury,  and  others 
who  were  supposed  to  possess  the  ear  of  the  Em- 
peror received  enormous  and  regularly  paid  stipends, 
of  which  after  the  fall  of  the  Empire  I  obtained  the 
details  from  the  Khedive's  own  Ministers;  but,  large 
as  these  sums  were,  they  sank  into  insignificance 
when  compared  with  what  he  was  induced  to  give  for 
the  furtherance  of  the  pet  French  scheme  of  the  Suez 
Canal. 

He  was  far  too  acute  not  to  be  aware  that  it  could 
be  of  no  possible  utility  to  Egypt,  and  was  likely  to 
prove  very  much  the  reverse ;  for  while  it  opened  no 
new  outlet  for  the  trade  of  the  country,  which  already 
passed  to  and  from  Europe  by  Alexandria,  and  to  and 


190  TUEKEY  [i860 

from  India  and  China  by  Suez,  all  that  Egypt  gained 
by  the  transit  trade  would  be  inevitably  lost. 

Before  the  canal  was  made  the  steamers  brought 
their  passengers  and  cargoes  to  Alexandria  and  Suez, 
which  had  to  pass  thence  by  rail  through  Egypt  for 
transhipment,  to  the  great  benefit  of  the  country; 
and  our  troops  to  and  from  India  were  conveyed  by 
large  troop-ships,  which  remained  long  and  spent  much 
in  the  Egyptian  ports,  while  the  men  were  forwarded 
by  rail.  But  when  the  canal  was  made  all  this  came 
to  an  end.  The  transit  trade  no  doubt  increased 
enormously,  but  all  benefit  from  it  to  Egypt  ceased, 
for  it  passed  through  the  canal  without  discharging 
passengers  or  goods  and  without  the  employment  of 
an  Egyptian  workman. 

Ismail  Pasha  must  have  foreseen  all  this,  but  he 
was  ready  to  pay  anything  to  realise  his  dream  of 
independence,  which  he  could  not  hope  for  without 
the  support  of  France;  and  this  he  endeavoured  to 
purchase  by  lavish  contributions  to  the  canal  scheme. 

A  pamphlet  published  soon  after  the  opening, 
under  the  title  of  Ce  que  coitte  a  VEgypte  le  Canal 
de  Suez,  went  into  an  elaborate  calculation  of  what 
the  cost  of  it  had  been,  placing  it  at  four  hundred 
millions  of  francs,  to  which  must  be  added  some  forty 
or  fifty  millions  more  expended  on  the  opening 
ceremonies,  the  whole  amounting  to  a  sum  which 
largely  contributed  to  the  bankruptcy  and  consequent 
deposition  of  Ismail  Pasha. 

Those  who  witnessed  the  scale  of  the  Oriental 
magnificence  with  which  these  opening  ceremonies 
were  conducted  could  feel  no  surprise  on  learning 
what  the  cost  of  them  had  been.  Many  thousand 
guests  from  all  parts  of  the  world  were  invited  and 
entertained  at  the  Khedive's  expense;  large  steamers 
were  chartered  to  convey  them  through  the  canal; 
houses  and  lodgings  were  hired  for  them  at  Cairo, 
where  they  lived  luxuriously  at  free  quarters ;  a  huge 


OPENING  OF  SUEZ  CANAL  191 

palace  was  erected  in  the  desert  near  the  Bitter  Lakes, 
and  balls  and  festivities  given  in  it;  the  best  orchestras, 
singers,  and  actors  were  brought  from  the  European 
theatres  at  enormous  salaries,  and  the  dresses  supplied 
not  only  to  the  leading  stars  but  to  everyone  who 
figured  in  the  pieces  were  of  the  finest  possible  material 
without  the  slightest  regard  to  cost,  and  the  repre- 
sentations were  in  all  respects  more  perfect  than  I 
have  ever  seen  elsewhere.  The  newspaper  corre- 
spondents were  there  in  shoals,  and  they,  as  well  as 
the  innumerable  private  visitors  who  were  the  reci- 
pients of  this  splendid  hospitality,  returned  to  their 
own  countries  proclaiming  Ismail  Pasha  the  most 
enlightened  of  rulers,  and  declaring  that  if  he  could 
be  made  Sultan  at  Constantinople  it  would  be  the 
salvation  of  the  Turkish  Empire. 

But  even  to  those  who  did  not  view  things  through 
these  deceptive  spectacles  the  opening  ceremonies 
were  in  the  highest  degree  striking  and  interesting. 
They  commenced  with  a  picturesque  religious  cere- 
mony on  the  sands  near  Port  Said,  where  were  col- 
lected the  fleet  of  steamers  which  were  to  convey 
the  foreign  representatives  and  the  invited  guests 
through  the  canal,  and  these  formed  a  long  and  im- 
posing procession,  headed  by  the  Empress  Eugenie 
in  the  beautiful  yacht  L'Aigle ;  then  the  Emperor  of 
Austria  and  the  other  representatives  according  to 
their  respective  ranks.  They  halted  for  the  night  at 
the  Bitter  Lakes,  where  a  ball  was  given  in  the  new 
Aladdin  Palace,  which  had  suddenly  sprung  into 
existence  at  Ismailia,  and  proceeded  the  next  day  to 
Suez,  whence  the  company  made  their  way  to  Cairo 
to  take  part  in  the  festivities  prepared  for  them  there. 

Everything  had  gone  of!  without  a  hitch  of  any  kind, 
and  old  Lesseps  was  in  his  glory,  exulting  with  jus- 
tifiable pride  in  the  accomplishment  of  a  magnificent 
work  carried  out  under  immense  difficulties,  and  above 
all  rejoicing  in  the  blow  he  believed  himself  to  have 


192  TURKEY  [isvo 

inflicted  on  la  per  fide  Albion.  His  triumph  would 
have  been  embittered  if  he  had  surmised  that  it  was 
la  perfide  Albion  alone  which  was  to  reap  the  benefit 
of  his  labours,  and  that  France  would  gain  nothing 
by  them;  but  he  was  disturbed  by  no  such  distressing 
foreboding,  and  he  determined  still  further  to  celebrate 
the  occasion  by  marrying  a  second  wife,  and  the 
ceremony  took  place  in  the  presence  of  his  sons  and 
of  his  grandchildren  three  days  after  the  opening. 

Poor  old  man — though  he  was  no  friend  of  ours  and 
we  have  no  call  to  feel  grateful  to  him  for  a  benefit 
he  unwittingly  did  us,  he  is  not  to  be  blamed  for  his 
wish  to  transfer  the  trade  of  the  East  from  us  to 
his  own  country;  and  the  indomitable  determination 
that  he  showed  from  first  to  last  must  be  admired, 
even  though  it  was  accompanied  by  a  perfect  disre- 
gard of  human  suffering.  He  obtained  from  the 
Khedive  whole  armies  of  Fellahs  to  work  as  forced 
labourers  on  the  canal;  and  when  the  cholera  broke 
out  among  them,  and  they  were  dying  like  flies  in 
their  hundreds  and  thousands,  overworked  and  under- 
fed, they  were  ruthlessly  kept  to  their  tasks,  till  at 
last,  in  spite  of  Lesseps'  resistance,  the  protests  of 
our  Government  against  the  continuance  of  this 
barbarous  system  obliged  the  Khedive  to  withdraw 
the  privilege,  for  which  under  an  award  of  the  Emperor 
Napoleon,  to  whom  the  matter  was  referred,  he  had  to 
pay  a  sum  of  no  less  than  three  millions  sterling  to  the 
canal  company  as  a  compensation  for  the  loss  of  the 
forced  labour  he  had  promised. 

From  Egypt  we  went  to  England  on  leave,  and  had 
hardly  returned  to  Constantinople  when  there  was 
the  great  fire  that  burnt  the  Embassy  along  with 
two-thirds  of  Pera.  Even  in  that  land  of  great  fires 
there  never  had  been  one  at  once  so  extensive  and 
destructive  and  that  had  completed  its  havoc  in  so 
short  a  space  of  time,  or  that  had  been  accompanied 
by  so  great  a  loss  of  life;  for,  though  the  great  fire  at 


FIRE  AT  CONSTANTINOPLE  193 

Stamboul  some  ten  or  twelve  years  before  may  have 
extended  over  nearly  as  large  an  area  and  burnt  nearly 
as  many  houses,  it  took  three  days  to  complete  its 
work,  while  at  Pera  it  began  in  the  forenoon  and 
was  over  long  before  midnight,  having  in  that  short 
time  consumed  everything  that  lay  in  its  line  of  march, 
the  Embassy  having  been  one  of  the  last  houses  to 
take  fire. 

We  were  at  luncheon  on  June  6,  1870,  when  it  was 
reported  that  a  fire  had  broken  out  in  a  suburb  of 
Pera,  and  on  going  to  an  upper  window  I  saw  that  it 
was  about  half  a  mile  distant;  but  as  I  observed  that 
the  wind,  which  nearly  amounted  to  a  gale,  set  straight 
down  upon  us,  with  nothing  but  wooden  houses 
between  us  and  the  fire,  I  at  once  ordered  the  iron 
shutters  with  which  the  windows  were  fitted  to  be 
closed,  and  our  three  fire-engines  to  be  got  out  and 
placed  near  the  tanks.  I  knew  them  to  be  in  perfect 
working  order,  as  I  had  myself  seen  them  tried  a  few 
days  before,  and  in  spite  of  being  well  laughed  at 
for  taking  such  precautions  against  what  was  thought 
an  altogether  imaginary  danger,  I  sent  down  to  our 
stationnaire,  the  Antelope,  for  a  body  of  seamen  to  be 
ready  to  help  in  case  of  need ;  and  it  was  not  very  long 
before  it  was  evident  that  their  services  were  likely 
to  be  required,  for  the  fire  spread  and  approached  us 
with  marvellous  rapidity. 

There  was  probably  no  one  who  could  see  as  much  of 
its  course  as  my  wife,  for,  while  I  had  to  be  everywhere 
organising  our  resistance,  she,  after  helping  my 
daughter,  her  governess,  and  the  maids  to  fill  baths 
with  water  in  every  room  on  the  side  of  the  fire,  sta- 
tioned herself  at  an  upper  window  which  commanded 
a  complete  view  of  what  was  going  on.  After  a  time 
she  saw  the  fire  breaking  out  in  one  place  after  another 
at  some  distance  from  the  main  conflagration.  Blazing 
planks  from  the  wooden  houses  were  carried  by  the 

wind  over  the  roofs  of  the  houses  nearest  to  the  fire, 

14 


194  TURKEY  [1870 

and  first  a  little  puff  of  smoke  would  be  seen  where  the 
planks  fell,  and  then  a  blaze  and  a  fresh  fire,  cutting 
off  the  retreat  of  the  people  in  the  intermediate  houses, 
which  explained  the  large  number  that  perished. 

There  were  about  forty  yards  between  the  Embassy 
and  the  nearest  row  of  houses,  and  we  hoped  that  the 
distance  would  save  us ;  but  the  draught  caused  by  the 
fire  made  the  wind  blow  with  almost  hurricane  vio- 
lence, and  when  those  caught  fire  great  tongues  of 
flame  blew  right  up  to  us  across  the  intervening 
space,  till  we  were  very  much  as  if  we  had  been  at  the 
mouth  of  a  blast-furnace,  and  inside  the  iron  shutters 
the  glass  of  the  windows  became  so  hot  that  I  could 
not  bear  my  hand  on  it.  Some  of  the  Antelopes 
men  had  been  stationed  on  the  roof  where  they  once 
put  out  a  fire  that  had  taken  under  the  slates,  and 
when  I  went  up  there  I  found  them  working  in  a 
scorching  heat,  stifled  with  smoke  and  in  a  rain  of 
burning  cinders,  against  which  they  had  no  fireman's 
dress  to  protect  them,  and  I  was  not  surprised  when 
soon  after  they  sent  to  tell  me  they  could  not  stand  it 
any  longer.  But  I  knew  then  that  if  any  part  of  the 
roof  were  again  to  take  fire  nothing  could  save  the 
house,  and  we  were  not  long  kept  in  suspense;  for  it 
did  catch,  and  then  almost  instantaneously  it  was  in  a 
blaze  from  one  end  to  the  other,  as  it  was  all  heated 
to  such  an  extent  that  when  once  lighted  the  fire  ran 
like  a  train  of  gunpowder. 

I  fortunately  happened  at  the  moment  to  be  on  the 
upper  floor,  where  our  bedrooms  were,  for  it  is  certain 
that  if  I  had  not  been  there  neither  my  wife,  nor  my 
daughter,  nor  the  governess  would  ever  have  got  down, 
as  they  would  not  believe  that  there  could  be  any 
immediate  danger;  but  I  had  seen  the  frightful 
rapidity  of  the  approach  of  the  flames  and  knew  that 
there  was  no  time  to  be  lost.  I  told  them  to  make  a 
bundle  of  what  they  could  carry  in  their  arms  but  not 
to  attempt  to  save  anything  else,  and  I  had  almost 


EMBASSY  BUENT  195 

to  drag  them  away  by  force,  as  there  was  much  they 
were  loth  to  lose.  I  am  sure  that  I  did  not  allow  them 
more  than  two  minutes,  but  we  were  none  too  soon  in 
making  our  escape,  for  two  of  the  three  staircases  were 
already  impassable,  the  melted  lead  pouring  down 
them  like  rain,  and  in  the  other,  down  which  we  went, 
the  smoke  was  so  thick  that  we  could  not  see  the  steps 
on  which  we  put  our  feet ;  but  all  got  safe  to  the  garden, 
where,  though  the  heat  was  intense,  the  house  was  a 
protection  against  the  hot  cinders  that  were  flying 
from  the  burning 'wooden  buildings. 

Nothing  then  remained  but  to  try  to  save  all  that 
could  be  got  out  of  the  state  apartments  and  living- 
rooms,  and  in  this  we  were  very  successful,  as  before 
the  fire  reached  that  floor  there  was  time  to  carry 
down  most  of  what  was  at  all  movable — furniture, 
books,  pictures,  etc. — though  much  of  it  was  of  course 
damaged  and  a  great  deal  was  carried  off  by  the 
thieves  and  pilferers  who  had  managed  to  get  into 
the  garden ;  but  there  was  not  a  change  of  clothes  left 
to  any  one  of  our  party. 

The  archives  of  the  Embassy  were  in  vaulted  rooms 
on  the  ground  floor  and  were  saved,  and  not  a  public 
document  was  lost,  but  all  my  own  private  papers 
were  burnt,  and  I  still  have  to  deplore  the  whole  of 
my  correspondence  with  the  different  Ministers  under 
whom  I  had  served,  sometimes  at  very  interesting 
moments.  It  would  have  been  easy  for  us  to  save 
every  article  belonging  to  us  if  we  had  begun  to 
remove  them  as  soon  as  the  danger  became  apparent, 
though,  as  the  day  was  Sunday,  we  had  fewer  people 
than  usual  about  the  place. 

In  a  letter  to  Hammond,  the  Under-Secretary  of  the 
Foreign  Office,  I  wrote:  "  Lady  Elliot,  our  little  girl, 
her  governess,  and  the  maids  were  on  the  bedroom 
floor,  and  after  filling  every  bath,  jug,  and  basin,  kept 
on  the  look-out  that  the  insidious  enemy  should  not 
slip  in  unawares,  and  on  one  occasion  they  did  detect 


196  TURKEY  [mo 

and  suppress  him.  When,  however,  the  fight  was  over 
they  had  not  prepared  an  article  of  their  own  for 
removal,  and  so  the  whole  was  lost.  Do  not  imagine 
that  I  regret  it,  for,  though  we  were  beaten,  we  had  the 
consciousness  of  having  done  everything  we  could, 
and  we  should  not  have  this  feeling  if  any  of  us  had 
been  engaged  upon  our  private  property.  The  fact  of 
the  matter  is,  that  when  I  think  that  if  I  had  not 
myself  been  at  that  moment  on  the  bedroom  floor, 
and  remember  that  neither  Lady  Elliot  nor  my 
daughter  would  ever  have  come  down,  I  look  upon 
their  losses  and  my  own  with  most  complete  in- 
difference." 

We  had  the  satisfaction  of  receiving  very  compli- 
mentary acknowledgments  from  the  Government  and 
their  thanks,  in  which  my  wife  was  included,  for  our 
efforts  to  save  the  public  property ;  and  Lord  Clarendon, 
in  one  of  the  last  letters  he  ever  wrote,  enclosed  a  few 
most  flattering  lines  from  the  Queen.  He  was  dead 
before  it  reached  me. 

The  scene  in  the  garden,  where  we  had  taken  refuge 
after  being  driven  out  of  the  house,  was  a  curious  one ; 
for  there  were  piles  of  furniture  and  chattels  of  all 
sorts  surrounded  by  crowds  of  people,  of  whom  some 
were  sympathisers  and  others  were  pilferers,  whom  it 
was  difficult  to  prevent  from  exercising  their  calling, 
and  who  had  climbed  in  with  no  praiseworthy  designs. 

In  the  old  Turkish  cemetery  called  the  "  Petit 
Champ,"  just  below  the  Embassy,  one  could  see  in- 
numerable groups  of  the  houseless  people,  who,  with 
the  bundles  containing  all  that  remained  of  their 
property,  had  established  themselves  under  the 
cypress  trees  for  the  night — Christian  groups  and 
Mahometan  groups — all  no  doubt  in  deep  despair,  but 
giving  no  vent  to  noisy  wailing  and  lamentation. 

When  nothing  more  could  be  done  to  save  the  house, 
the  engines  were  withdrawn  for  the  protection  of  the 
stables  and  laundries,  which  stood  at  some  little  distance, 


EMBASSY  BURNT  197 

and  their  success  in  that  quarter  stopped  the  progress 
of  the  fire  in  a  direction  where  if  it  had  once  got  a  hold 
it  would  have  had  a  much  greater  extension. 

It  had  been  a  puzzle  to  know  what  to  do  with  the 
horses,  for  the  chance  of  saving  the  stables  seemed  very 
remote,  and  it  was  not  easy  to  get  them  out  into  the 
glaring  light  of  the  fire;  but  one  high-couraged  and 
bold  old  English  horse  consented  to  lead  the  way,  and 
the  others  all  followed.  Even  when  they  were  in  the 
garden  the  difficulty  was  not  over,  for  the  main  entrance 
was  not  passable,  and  in  the  garden  they  would  soon 
have  been  driven  wild  by  the  glare  and  the  rain  of 
burning  cinders ;  but  there  was  fortunately  a  narrow 
foot  gate  opening  into  a  street  away  from  the  fire,  and 
through  this  it  was  possible  to  squeeze  them,  and  I 
desired  that  they  should  be  taken  to  Therapia,  about 
twelve  miles  off.  I  had  to  borrow  some  bluejackets 
to  help  the  grooms  to  take  them  down,  but  there  was 
no  difficulty  in  obtaining  volunteers  for  a  night  ride, 
during  which  there  must  have  been  some  amusing 
scenes,  as  the  sailors  tumbled  off  half  a  dozen  times. 

At  last,  when  there  was  nothing  more  to  be  done, 
after  leaving  a  guard  over  the  things  lying  in  the 
garden  we  made  rather  a  mournful  procession  down 
to  the  Antelope,  to  pass  the  night,  and  there  we  found 
ourselves  with  nothing  but  the  clothes  we  stood  in. 

My  wife  had  carried  off  her  brush  and  comb,  which 
had  to  do  duty  the  next  morning  for  the  sole  toilet  of 
the  whole  party ;  but  everyone  bore  the  inconveniences 
with  astonishing  cheerfulness,  for  we  all  of  us  felt 
that  of  all  who  were  burnt  out,  none  were  as  well  off 
as  ourselves  in  having  another  good  house  ready  to 
receive  us  at  Therapia;  and,  although  the  nuisance 
of  being  without  clothes  and  a  hundred  indispensable 
articles  was  great,  it  was  one  rather  to  laugh  at  than 
to  be  unhappy  about.  The  things  that  one  regretted 
the  most  were  not  so  much  those  of  real  value  as 
trifles  that  one  was  attached  to,  and  which  we  con- 


198  TURKEY  [i8?o 

tinued  to  miss  for  many  a  long  day;  but,  though  we 
could  and  did  laugh  at  our  own  discomforts  cheerily 
enough,  the  destruction  of  the  Embassy  itself  left  us 
with  very  sore  hearts. 

I  had  received  civil  messages  of  condolence  from  the 
Sultan,  who  wished  to  put  at  our  disposal  the  palace 
in  which  he  had  lodged  the  Prince  and  Princess  of 
Wales,  but  which  was  occupied  by  one  of  his  sisters 
who  was  unwilling  to  vacate  it,  and  the  Government 
telegraphed  to  me  to  convey  their  acknowledgments 
to  His  Majesty;  so  I  went  in  my  dirty  shooting  jacket 
to  the  Palace  and  delivered  my  message  to  the  Head 
Chamberlain,  explaining  that  I  was  not  in  a  fit  costume 
to  ask  to  deliver  it  in  person.  The  Sultan,  however, 
insisted  that  I  should  come  up  as  I  was,  and  asked 
minutely  about  all  that  had  occurred,  finishing  by 
expressing  his  hope  that  "  my  harem  '  had  not 
suffered.  It  sounded  rather  strange  to  English  ears, 
but  it  would  have  been  the  height  of  indelicacy  if  he 
had  said  that  he  hoped  my  wife  had  not  suffered,  for 
a  Turk  may  never  speak  to  another  man  about  his 
wife,  and  must  confine  himself  to  asking  about  the 
"  harem,"  which  only  means  the  whole  of  the  female 
part  of  the  establishment,  and  not  at  all  what  is 
generally  supposed  in  England.  If  you  know  that 
the  wife  of  one  of  your  friends  is  ill,  you  may  say  that 
you  understand  that  there  has  been  sickness  in  his 
family,  and  that  you  hope  it  is  disappearing,  but 
there  you  must  stop. 

The  number  of  persons  who  perished  in  this  fire  was 
never  even  approximately  ascertained,  but  it  certainly 
greatly  exceeded  that  on  any  previous  occasion,  and 
after  collecting  all  the  particulars  I  could  I  was 
satisfied  that  it  was  considerably  above  a  thousand, 
owing  to  the  unheard-of  rapidity  with  which  it  spread, 
and  which  took  everyone  by  surprise.  When  the  fire 
was  advancing  towards  them  from  the  side  on  which  it 
broke  out  the  people  clung  to  their  houses,  from  which 


LOSS  OF  LIFE 


QQ 


they  tried  to  remove  their  property,  without  being 
aware  that  the  fire  had  leapt  over  them  and  had 
lighted  others  in  their  rear;  and  whole  streets  thus 
suddenly  found  themselves  enveloped  in  a  blazing- 
circle  from  which  there  was  no  escape.  Another  cause 
of  many  deaths  was  the  absurd  belief  that  there  was 
no  danger  in  a  brick  or  stone  house ;  for  wherever  there 
were  any  of  these  in  a  wooden  quarter  numbers  of 
people  took  refuge  in  them  and  shut  themselves  up, 
thinking  they  might  remain  there  in  safety  till  the 
wooden  houses  round  them  were  burnt  out,  and  of 
course  all  of  them  perished. 

There  was  also  another  class  of  persons  of  whom 
very  many  were  burnt  without  being  much  regretted, 
and  these  were  the  thieves,  who  as  soon  as  a  house 
was  deserted,  and  even  before,  rushed  in  to  secure 
such  plunder  as  they  could  lay  hands  on,  and  were  so 
intent  upon  making  their  harvest  that  they  often  got 
caught  before  they  could  effect  their  escape ;  and  some 
notion  may  be  formed  of  their  numbers  by  the  fact 
that  on  the  morning  after  the  fire  some  seventy  caiques 
were  found  to  be  without  caikjees,  or  boatmen,  who 
were  notorious  as  being  thieves,  and  had  undoubtedly 
paid  the  penalty  of  their  misdeeds.  They  were  quite 
open  in  their  depredations,  and  some  of  them  even 
went  the  length  of  trying  to  carry  off  our  things  as  they 
were  being  taken  down  to  the  steamer  by  our  own 
people. 

Quite  close  to  the  wall  of  the  Embassy  garden  there 
was  a  sort  of  private  hospital  for  children,  the  whole 
of  whom,  thirteen  in  number,  were  burnt,  together 
with  the  two  nurses,  who  would  not  abandon  their 
charge;  and  stories  of  that  kind  were  numerous,  as 
well  as  of  some  very  gallant  rescues,  and  also  some 
with  a  mixture  of  the  tragical  and  ludicrous.  One 
woman  with  a  bundle  in  her  arms  met  a  friend  who 
asked  her  what  she  had  done  with  her  child,  and  then 
discovered  to  her  horror  that  she  was  carefully  nursing 


200  TURKEY  [isvo 

a  parcel  of  silver.  The  practice  of  the  poorer  people 
on  the  approach  of  a  fire  was  to  throw  their  valuables 
into  their  well,  going  back  afterwards  to  fish  them  out, 
and  this  poor  woman,  rushing  out  of  her  house  half 
distracted,  with  her  baby  in  one  arm  and  a  bundle  of 
silver  in  the  other,  had  thrown  the  baby  into  the  well 
and  continued  her  flight  without  discovering  her 
mistake. 

The  Government  behaved  very  liberally  in  granting 
us  all — ourselves,  the  gentlemen  of  the  Embassy,  and 
our  servants — a  fair  compensation  for  our  losses, 
though  of  course  it  did  not  nearly  cover  them,  and 
there  was  much  besides  for  which  no  compensation 
was  possible.  They  also  lost  no  time  in  beginning  the 
restoration  of  the  house,  of  which  the  walls  had  not 
materially  suffered,  and  we  again  inhabited  it  before 
wc  left  Constantinople. 


CHAPTER  IX 

TURKEY— II.:  THE  DREI-KAISER  BUND 

The  troubles  which  came  upon  Turkey,  beginning 
with  the  Herzegovinian  insurrection  in  1875,  and 
followed  by  the  wars  with  Servia  and  Montenegro,  the 
rising  in  Bulgaria  with  its  bloody  repression,  the  un- 
fortunate Conference  of  Constantinople,  and  the 
disastrous  war  with  Russia — were,  beyond  all  question, 
attributable  to  the  once  famous,  though  now  almost 
forgotten,  Drei-Kaiser  Bund,  or  league  for  common 
action  between  the  Governments  of  the  three  Northern 
Empires. 

The  effect  of  it  was  to  secure  for  Russia  the  whole 
weight  of  Austria  in  pursuing  her  traditional  policy 
of  weakening  and  embarrassing  Turkey,  although  this 
was  far  from  being  contemplated  or  intended  by  the 
man  then  at  the  head  of  the  Austro-Hungarian 
Government,  for  Count  Andrassy  had  certainly  no 
leaning  towards  Russia,  and  no  unfriendly  feeling 
towards  Turkey.  After  being  condemned  to  death, 
and  hanged  in  effigy,  for  his  part  in  the  great  Hungarian 
insurrection  of  1849,  which  was  suppressed  by  a 
Russian  army,  it  was  in  Turkey  that  Count  Andrassy 
had  found  a  refuge ;  but  it  was,  nevertheless,  he  who 
induced  his  Sovereign  to  enter  into  the  league  that 
proved  fatal  to  the  country  which  had  braved  the 
animosity  of  the  Northern  Courts  by  affording  shelter 
and  protection  to  him  and  other  "  rebels  "  who  were 
claimed  by  their  Governments. 

Austria,  when  she  went  into  the  alliance,  no  doubt 
hoped  to  be  able  to  check  the  Russian  intrigues  in 

201 


202  THE  DREI-KAISER  BUND  [1874 

Turkey — but  Russia  well  knew  that  it  would  enable 
her  to  succeed  in  making  Austria  play  her  game. 

During  my  subsequent  residence  at  Vienna  I 
became  so  intimate  with  Andrassy  that  we  could  speak 
with  little  reserve  on  either  part,  and  I  sometimes 
reproached  him  with  the  mischief  he  had  done  by  the 
change  he  had  inaugurated  in  the  policy  of  Austria  in 
the  East.  He  was  not  a  man  to  admit  that  he  ever 
could  have  been  mistaken,  but  there  was  something 
almost  apologetic  in  the  history  he  gave  of  the  origin 
of  the  Imperial  Bund,  and  in  justification  of  the  course 
he  had  adopted.  When  he  succeeded  Count  Beust  as 
Prime  Minister,  he  had  found  Austria,  he  said,  without 
an  ally  in  Europe — Russia  and  Italy  hostile,  Germany 
cold,  France  only  just  recovering  her  breath  after  her 
disasters.  It  was  indispensable  to  get  out  of  this 
position  of  isolation,  and  his  first  act  was  to  turn  to 
England,  in  the  hope  of  being  able  to  come  to  an 
agreement  which  would  give  both  countries  additional 
strength;  but  this  overture  was  rejected,  and  nothing 
remained  for  Austria  but  to  enter  into  close  connection 
with  the  two  neighbouring  Empires. 

This  account  of  the  origin  of  the  Drei-Kaiser  Bund 
is,  I  believe,  strictly  correct;  for,  before  its  formation, 
an  overture  such  as  that  spoken  of  by  Andrassy  was 
certainly  made  through  Lord  Lytton,  then  in  charge 
of  the  Embassy  at  Vienna,  and  was  rejected  by  Lord 
Granville,  who  naturally  hesitated  to  enter  into  what 
might  prove  an  embarrassing  alliance,  although  Count 
Andrassy  assured  me  that  he  did  not  ask  for  an 
alliance,  but  merely  for  an  engagement  that  the  two 
Powers  should  act  in  concert  in  Eastern  matters.  Be 
this  as  it  may,  the  effect  of  our  refusal  to  fall  in  with 
Andrassy's  proposal  was  to  make  him  conclude  the 
agreement  with  Germany  and  Russia,  by  which  the 
latter  Power  was  enabled  to  pursue  her  intrigues  in 
Turkey,  not  only  without  being  checked  as  heretofore 
by  Austria,  but  with  her  actual  co-operation. 


ANDRASSY  203 

Andrassy  had  a  large  dose  of  vanity  in  his  com- 
position and  an  overweening  confidence  in  his  own 
power  of  influencing  others ;  and  he  honestly  believed 
that,  under  the  Drei-Kaiser  Bund,  it  would  be  himself 
who  would  direct  the  policy  of  the  three  Empires  at 
Constantinople,  and  the  supposition  of  his  putting 
himself  under  the  lead  of  General  Ignatiew  was  the 
last  thing  of  which  he  would  contemplate  the  possi- 
bility, though  others  could  plainly  see  that  the  new 
course  he  was  adopting  must  inevitably  lead  to  that 
result. 

The  very  first  political  conversation  I  ever  had  with 
him  was  on  this  subject,  and  I  then  warned  him  that 
he  would  find  himself  led  where  he  had  no  intention 
of  going. 

I  was  returning  to  Constantinople  from  leave  of 
absence  in  May  1874,  when,  in  the  train  between 
Vienna  and  Pesth,  I  got  a  telegram  asking  me  to  dine 
that  evening  at  the  Palace  of  Buda.  The  Emperor 
spoke  much  of  Eastern  affairs,  and  was  evidently 
anxious  that  I  should  be  convinced  of  his  friendly 
feelings  towards  Turkey,  of  which  I  never  had  any 
doubt,  for  he  was  fully  aware  that  Ignatiew  was 
doing  all  in  his  power  to  create  a  distrust  of  him  at 
Constantinople. 

After  dinner  Andrassy  took  me  to  his  own  rooms 
and  explained  his  new  policy  at  great  length.  He 
never  touched  upon  the  Drei-Kaiser  Bund,  nor 
alluded  to  any  understanding  with  the  other  Empires, 
but  spoke  as  if  he  had  taken  his  new  departure  solely 
from  considerations  in  reference  to  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  Slavonic  populations,  and  he  was  con- 
vinced that  it  would  prove  as  advantageous  to  Turkey 
as  to  Austria.  They  both  of  them,  he  said,  had 
semi-savage  populations  of  the  same  nationality  on 
each  side  of  the  frontier,  and  it  could  not  but  be  to 
the  advantage  of  Turkey  if  these  people  were  taught 
to  turn  their  eye  to  Austria,  which  was  a  thoroughly 


204  THE  DREI-KAISER  BUND  [1875 

friendly  Power,  and  to  look  to  her  for  sympathy  and 
support  in  obtaining  redress  of  their  grievances, 
instead  of  to  Eussia,  of  whose  hostility  to  Turkey 
everyone  was  aware.  The  cause  of  these  people  would 
henceforth  be  pleaded  at  Constantinople  by  the 
Austrian  rather  than  by  the  Russian  Embassy,  and 
the  influence  that  Austria  would  thus  acquire  over 
them  would  enable  her  to  prevent  anything  contrary 
to  the  rights  or  real  interests  of  the  Sultan  from  ever 
being  attempted. 

I  told  him  that  it  was  not  difficult  to  foresee  the 
results  that  must  follow  from  the  course  he  meant  to 
adopt;  for,  after  entering  upon  this  competition  with 
Russia  for  the  favour  of  the  vassal  and  Slav  popula- 
tions, he  would  be  forced  to  outbid  her,  and  to  go 
further  than  even  she  had  ventured  openly  to  go  in 
the  encouragement  of  sedition. 

(It  is  to  be  remembered  that  Roumania  and  Servia 
were  at  that  time  vassal  principalities,  which,  though 
perfectly  independent  in  their  internal  administration, 
were  anxious  to  sever  their  connection  with  Turkey, 
while  all  the  Powers  wished  the  status  quo  to  be  main- 
tained undisturbed.) 

We  were  all  ready,  I  said,  to  support  him  in  urging 
the  redress  of  grievances  upon  the  Porte,  but  we  all 
knew  perfectly  well  that  it  was  not  the  redress  of 
grievances  but  an  entire  separation  from  the  Turkish 
Empire  that  the  discontented  were  aiming  at;  and, 
if  he  was  bent  on  taking  the  wind  out  of  the  sails  of 
Russia  he  would  find  himself  obliged  to  support  them 
in  the  steps  they  would  take  with  this  object. 

This  prophecy,  which  was  fulfilled  to  the  very  letter, 
stands  on  record  in  various  despatches  and  letters 
written  by  me  at  the  time. 

The  policy  of  Austria  at  Constantinople,  up  to  the 
time  of  the  Drei-Kaiser  Bund,  had  been  directed  by 
Baron  Prokesch  Osten,  a  statesman  of  unrivalled 
knowledge  of  Eastern  affairs,  who  had  for  years  been  a 


COUNT  ZICHY  205 

thorn  in  the  side  of  the  Russian  diplomatists,  con- 
stantly seeing  through  and  frustrating  their  designs, 
and  acting  almost  invariably  in  the  closest  harmony 
with  the  English  Embassy. 

He  was  now  removed  from  his  position  as 
Internuntio — equivalent  in  rank  to  Envoy — and 
replaced  by  Count  Franz  Zichy,  a  persona  gratissima 
to  the  Russians  from  having  acted  as  Imperial  Com- 
missioner with  the  headquarters  of  the  Russian  army 
that  suppressed  the  great  Hungarian  insurrection,  by 
which  he  had  earned  the  aversion  of  his  own  Hungarian 
countrymen  without  securing  the  respect  or  esteem  of 
the  Austrians. 

Having  arrived  at  Constantinople  with  the  rank  of 
Ambassador,  never  before  held  by  the  Austrian 
representative,  as  an  indication  that  his  Government 
intended  to  assume  a  more  prominent  position  than  it 
had  taken  in  the  past,  he  at  once  entered  upon  the  post 
assigned  to  him  with  great  energy,  and  I  very  soon 
reported  that  Ignatiew  was  skilfully  keeping  unusually 
quiet,  "  satisfied  with  seeing  Zichy  play  the  Russian 
game";  and,  being  by  far  the  abler  man,  it  was  not 
long  before  he  directed  the  Austrian,  as  well  as  the 
German,  Embassy  as  completely  as  if  he  had  been  the 
official  representative  of  the  two  other  Emperors  as 
well  as  of  his  own. 

But,  while  prompting  every  action  of  Zichy 's,  he 
not  only  kept  himself  in  the  background,  but  con- 
tinually warned  the  Turks  against  the  hostile  tendency 
of  Austria,  from  which,  he  declared,  he  was  with 
difficulty  defending  them;  and  I  was  told  by  the  Sultan 
and  his  Ministers  that  he  seldom  saw  them  without 
enlarging  on  this  theme — and,  if  he  did  not  succeed 
in  inspiring  confidence  in  himself,  or  his  Government, 
he  was,  at  least,  perfectly  successful  in  producing  a 
thorough  distrust  of  Austria,  which,  indeed,  her  own 
proceedings  were  well  calculated  to  create. 

After  a  time  Zichy  became  fully  persuaded  of  the 


206  THE  DREI-KAISER  BUND  [1875 

perfidy  of  his  colleague,  but  even  then  he  could  not 
shake  off  his  trammels.  When  walking  with  him  in 
his  garden,  I  have  seen  him  stop  and  look  up  at  the 
Russian  Embassy,  which  lay  just  above,  shaking  his 
fist  at  it  in  impotent  rage,  and  exclaiming,  "  Oh  !  that 
fiend  of  a  man  I"  and  the  next  day  he  would  humbly 
follow  the  fiend  as  obediently  as  ever. 

Baron  Werther,  the  German  Ambassador,  was  also 
a  weak,  good  kind  of  man.  He  told  me  that  Prince 
Bismarck  had  rather  a  friendly  feeling  than  otherwise 
for  the  Turks,  but  that  he  took  no  interest  in  Turkish 
affairs  apart  from  the  effect  they  might  have  on 
European  politics.  His  instructions  were  to  act  in 
concert  with  the  two  other  Imperial  Embassies,  but 
he  did  not  like  being  considered  as  a  tool  of  Ignatiew, 
and  he  once  piteously  complained  to  me  that  someone 
in  the  House  of  Commons  had  spoken  of  Ignatiew  as 
Mephistopheles,  and  of  himself  as  his  shadow:  what, 
he  asked,  had  he  done  to  deserve  being  called  a 
shadow  ? 

I  gravely  pointed  out  that  a  shadow  had  not  any- 
thing to  do,  though  the  accusation  was  an  absurd  one, 
since  Ignatiew,  if  he  had  been  the  personage  pre- 
tended, would  not  have  been  entitled  to  any  such 
appendage  as  a  shadow.  He  did  not  much  relish  the 
joke,  but  Ignatiew,  who  also  spoke  to  me  about  it, 
was  evidently  much  more  flattered  than  annoyed  by 
the  title  that  had  been  given  him,  which  he  took  as  a 
recognition  of  his  consummate  skill  in  accomplishing 
his  ends. 

The  consequences  of  the  Drei-Kaiser  Bund  quickly 
became  apparent  in  the  breaking  out  of  the  Herze- 
govinian  insurrection  in  July  1875,  which  began 
immediately  on  the  return  from  banishment  to 
Montenegro  of  a  number  of  turbulent  Bosnians  in 
favour  of  whom  the  Russian  Embassy  had  strongly 
interceded.  They  first  attacked  and  murdered  a  party 
of  Turkish  travellers,  and  then  robbed  and  burnt  the 


INSURRECTION  IN  HERZEGOVINA      207 

villages  whose  inhabitants  refused  to  join  them,  and 
in  this  way  their  numbers  were  quickly  increased, 
though  at  first  by  very  unwilling  recruits. 

The  country  had  been  so  quiet  that  there  was  no 
force  at  hand  to  put  down  the  disturbance,  and  the 
Governor  asked  for  a  couple  of  hundred  men,  which 
was  all  he  thought  necessary;  but  the  Russian  and 
Austrian  Embassies  at  once  remonstrated,  urging  the 
Porte  not  to  give  unreal  importance  to  an  insignificant 
disturbance,  and  to  be  satisfied  with  enquiring  into 
the  causes  that  had  led  to  it. 

Advice  to  do  nothing  is  always  so  agreeable  to  the 
Porte  that  of  course  it  was  followed;  and  this  took 
place  again  and  again,  while  the  movements  acquired 
greater  extension,  and  the  Governor-General  continued 
begging  in  vain  for  a  force  sufficient  to  put  an  end  to 
it  at  once,  his  applications  being  always  paralysed 
by  the  objections  of  the  three  Embassies. 

The  insurgents  being  led  by  the  people  who  had  been 
permitted  to  return  from  exile  at  the  instance  of 
Russia,  that  Power  might  fairly  have  been  expected 
to  wish  that  they  should  justify  her  recommendation, 
and  to  use  her  influence  to  keep  them  quiet.  She  did 
the  very  reverse,  and  throughout  the  insurrection 
gave  it  every  possible  encouragement  and  assistance 
short  of  helping  it  by  a  regular  contingent  of  troops. 

M.  Yonine,  the  Russian  Consul-General  at  Ragusa, 
did  not  even  think  it  necessary  to  conceal  his  active 
co-operation  with  the  insurgents.  Their  chiefs  met  at 
his  house,  where  their  plans  were  laid,  and  were  aided 
by  the  information  that  General  Ignatiew  enabled  him 
to  give  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Turkish  authorities ; 
and  so  little  mystery  was  made  of  his  co-operation 
that,  on  one  occasion  when  an  insurgent  chief  was 
killed,  the  Russian  flag  at  the  Consulate  was  displayed 
at  half-mast,  and  the  Consul-General  attended  the 
funeral  in  full  uniform.  Arms,  ammunition  and  supplies 
of  all  kinds  went  through  the  same  safe  channel. 


208  THE  DREI-KAISER  BUND  [1875 

Then  the  new  Austrian  policy  began  to  make  itself 
felt.  The  Slavs  had  to  be  taught,  as  Count  Andrassy 
had  said,  that  they  had  more  to  expect  from  Austria 
than  from  Russia,  and  it  was  found,  as  I  had  warned 
him,  that  when  once  he  entered  upon  this  competition 
he  must  outbid  the  Russians,  or  be  content  to  lose  the 
race. 

To  what  extent  the  encouragement  given  to  them 
was  directly  sanctioned  by  the  Imperial  Government 
it  may  be  difficult  to  determine,  but  they  cannot  be 
acquitted  of  having  at  least  wilfully  shut  their  eyes 
to  the  proceedings  of  their  military  authorities  in 
Dalmatia  and  Croatia,  who  were  all  Slavs  by  birth 
and  in  sympathy. 

The  Porte  was  assured  from  Vienna  that  any  armed 
body  passing  the  Austrian  frontier  would  at  once  be 
disarmed  and  interne;  but  Count  Rodeck,  the 
Governor-General  of  Dalmatia,  never  made  even  a 
pretence  of  performing  this  elementary  international 
duty,  and  made  it  impossible  for  the  Turkish  troops 
either  to  capture  or  destroy  the  insurgent  bands, 
which,  when  too  hotly  pressed,  simply  passed  the 
frontier,  where  they  could  not  be  pursued,  and  after 
receiving  supplies  and  ammunition  reappeared  in  some 
other  quarter,  where  the  same  scene  was  re-enacted. 

Consequently,  the  Turkish  Government  showing 
besides  its  usual  incapacity,  the  insurrection  went  on 
for  month  after  month,  till  the  three  Powers  deter- 
mined to  take  the  matter  in  hand,  and  the  Andrassy 
Note  was  issued  at  the  end  of  December  1875;  which, 
proving  fruitless,  was  followed  in  the  month  of  May 
by  the  famous  and  equally  useless  Berlin  Memorandum, 
which  our  Government  were  afterwards  blamed  for 
having  rejected,  instead  of  amending  it,  by  which,  it 
was  said,  they  had  prevented  a  common  action  by  the 
European  Powers. 

There  was  little  justice  in  the  accusation,  for  the 
Drei-Kaiser  Bund  itself  had  put  an  end  to  all  general 


BEELIN  MEMOKANDUM  209 

concert.  The  Prime  Ministers  of  the  three  Emperors, 
Prince  Gortchakow,  Prince  Bismarck,  and  Count 
Andrassy,  met  at  Berlin,  and  there,  without  con- 
sultation or  communication  with  any  other  Govern- 
ment, drew  up  the  famous  Memorandum,  simply 
informing  the  different  Cabinets  by  telegraph  of  its 
substance,  and  contemptuously  asking  that  their 
adherence  should  at  once  be  telegraphed  back  to  them ; 
for  the  three  great  men  did  not  consider  it  necessary 
to  remain  at  Berlin  long  enough  to  allow  of  a  written 
answer  being  received,  or  to  permit  them  to  discuss 
any  observations  or  objections  that  we  might  wish 
to  make.  There  it  was — flung  to  us  as  an  intima- 
tion of  the  decision  of  the  three  Emperors,  to  which, 
indeed,  we  might  give  our  adhesion,  but  without  a 
hint  that  any  amendment  would  be  listened  to. 

However,  Lord  Derby,  in  an  admirable  letter  to 
Odo  Bussell,  at  once  declared  that  it  would  be 
childish  to  raise  objections  or  to  make  difficulties 
because  we  were  not  consulted  in  the  first  instance, 
and  it  was  solely  on  the  merits  of  the  proposal  itself 
that  Her  Majesty's  Government  must  decline  to  give 
it  their  adhesion. 

The  terms  of  the  Memorandum  were  such  as  to 
make  it  difficult  to  believe  that  its  authors  can 
ever  have  supposed  it  likely  to  lead  to  a  pacification, 
for  it  was  evidently  far  more  calculated  to  ensure 
a  prolongation  than  a  termination  of  the  struggle. 
The  paper  began  by  stating  that  the  news  from 
Turkey  impelled  the  three  Cabinets  to  draw  their 
intimacy  closer.  It  suggested  naval  co-operation 
for  the  protection  of  their  own  subjects  (who  were 
in  no  sort  of  danger)  and  of  the  Christian  inhabitants 
of  Turkey  (contrary  to  an  express  stipulation  in  the 
Treaty  of  Paris).  The  three  Powers  were  to  insist 
at  the  Porte,  with  all  the  energy  of  their  united  voices, 
on  an  armistice  of  two  months.  It  recommended 
among   other   suggestions,   that   the   Porte   should 

15 


210  THE  DKEI-KAISER  BUND  [1876 

be  required  to  concentrate  its  troops  at  particular 
points;  that  the  consuls  or  delegates  of  the  Powers 
should  keep  a  watch  over  the  execution  of  the 
reforms;  and  it  concluded  with  the  extraordinary 
intimation  that  if  the  armistice  were  to  expire  with- 
out the  ends  of  the  Powers  being  attained,  "  the 
three  Imperial  Courts  were  of  opinion  that  it  would 
become  necessary  to  supplement  their  diplomatic 
action  by  the  sanction  of  an  agreement  to  promote 
the  efficacious  measures  which  might  appear  to  be 
demanded  in  the  interest  of  general  peace." 

Lord  Derby  might  well  say,  as  he  did  in  the  letter 
I  have  referred  to,  that  this  clause  would  leave 
the  disposal  of  events  wholly  with  the  insurgents, 
who  could  not  be  expected  to  be  such  fools  as  to 
accept  the  terms  offered,  after  being  told  that,  if 
they  did  not  take  them,  the  Powers  would  intervene 
to  get  them  better  conditions. 

With  regard  to  the  armistice,  he  asked  who  was 
to  guarantee  it:  the  Turks  had  kept  the  last  one 
faithfully,  and  their  opponents  broke  it — can  they 
be  better  relied  upon  now  ? — and  he  conceived  that, 
before  any  plan  founded  on  the  proposed  basis  is 
discussed,  we  must  have  it  clearly  understood  that 
Servia  and  Montenegro  will  be  compelled,  if  necessary, 
to  keep  quiet  until  the  term  is  over. 

The  proposal  to  force  the  Turkish  Government 
to  rebuild  the  destroyed  villages  was  an  affair  of 
millions,  and  it  was  of  questionable  justice  to  make 
them  responsible  for  mischief  which  was  in  the  main 
the  work  of  the  insurgents. 

The  arguments  against  the  Memorandum  were 
equally  forcibly  pointed  out  in  the  public  despatch 
by  which  our  refusal  to  acquiesce  in  it  was  conveyed ; 
and  it  was  represented  that  by  forcing  the  Turks 
to  concentrate  their  forces  in  particular  places, 
while  the  insurgents  were  to  retain  their  arms,  the 
whole  country  would  be  delivered  up  to  anarchy. 


BERLIN  MEMORANDUM  211 

Her  Majesty's  Government  further  considered 
that  the  proposed  "  consular  supervision '  would 
reduce  the  Sultan's  authority  to  a  nullity,  and  they 
were  of  opinion  that  care  should  be  taken  that  the 
naval  forces  of  foreign  Powers  were  not  employed 
in  any  maimer  contrary  to  the  treaty  rights  of  the 
Porte  or  subversive  of  the  Sultan's  authority. 

The  refusal  of  our  Government  to  have  anything 
to  do  with  the  Berlin  Memorandum  was,  at  the  time, 
unanimously  approved  by  all  parties  in  England;  and 
it  was  only  later,  after  Mr.  Gladstone  had  gone  too 
wild  upon  Turkish  matters  to  be  capable  of  listening 
to  reason,  that  he  reproached  them  for  the  course 
they  had  followed. 

This  famous  document  had  at  last  a  rather  igno- 
minious end.  It  was  to  have  been  presented  to 
the  Turkish  Government  by  the  representatives  of 
the  three  Powers  on  May  30,*  and  on  the  morning  of 
that  day  Sultan  Abdul  Aziz  was  deposed.  There 
was  then  a  little  hesitation  as  to  what  was  to  be  done 
about  it;  for,  while  the  Russians  wished  it  to  be 
presented  to  the  Ministers  of  the  new  Sultan  as 
soon  as  he  was  recognised,  Count  Andrassy  was  in 
favour  of  delay,  and  he  was  supported  by  Prince 
Bismarck;  the  final  result  being  that  it  stood  over 
for  a  time,  and  was  then  allowed  to  drop  without 
ever  having  been  presented  at  all.  Such  was  the 
end  of  this  famous  instrument,  which,  though  never 
acted  upon,  contributed  much  to  keep  alive  the  in- 
surrection and  to  encourage  the  Servians  and  Mon- 
tenegrins in  their  preparations  for  war,  by  con- 
vincing them  that  there  would  at  last  be  foreign 
pressure  laid  upon  the  Turkish  Government. 

During  the  whole  of  the  insurrection  in  Bosnia 
and  Herzegovina  the  conduct  of  Austria  was  so 
unlike  that  which  Turkey  had  a  right  to  expect  from 
a  friendly  disposed  neighbour  that  an  impression 

■*  1876. 


212  THE  DREI-KAISER  BUND  [1876 

gained  ground  that  she  was  actuated  by  a  deliberate 
design  of  aggrandisement  and  annexation;  but  I 
never  myself  shared  in  it — though  it  was  probably 
true  as  regarded  Rodeck  and  the  other  Slav  Generals; 
and  in  my  despatches  from  Constantinople,  at  the 
time  when  the  proceedings  of  the  Austrian  authorities 
were  most  suspicious,  I  continually  expressed  the 
opinion  that  the  Imperial  Government  was  not  hostile 
to  Turkey,  but  was  being  dragged  on  by  the  neces- 
sities arising  out  of  the  principle  adopted  by  Count 
Andrassy,  of  not  allowing  the  Slav  populations  to 
believe  the  Russian  Government  to  be  more  favour- 
able to  their  aspirations  than  himself. 

This  view  of  the  question  was  greatly  strengthened 
when  I  learnt  the  particulars  of  the  mission  of  a 
General  Soumarikov,  who,  in  September  1876,  and 
before  the  Russo-Turkish  War,  had  been  sent  by  the 
Russian  Government  to  Vienna  to  intimate  that, 
if  the  Austrian  Government  would  engage  not  to 
oppose  their  proceedings  on  the  eastern  side  of  the 
Balkan  Peninsula,  Russia  would  hold  Austria  to  be 
free  to  deal  with  the  western  side  of  it,  and  to  advance 
her  own  frontier  as  far  as  she  thought  fit.  Prince 
Bismarck  was  favourable  to  the  arrangement,  and, 
with  Austria  on  the  one  hand,  and  Russia  on  the 
other,  acting  with  the  moral  support  of  Germany,  the 
Turkish  Government  could  scarcely  have  even  attempt- 
ed to  oppose  a  serious  resistance  to  its  execution. 

The  overture  was  kept  very  secret  at  the  time,  and 
it  was  not  till  some  years  later  that  at  Vienna  I  learnt 
the  particulars  of  it  from  undoubted  sources.  I  then 
asked  Count  Andrassy  whether  it  had  included  the 
consent  of  Russia  that  Austria  should  advance  as 
far  as  Salonica,  which  she  has  often  been  suspected 
of  coveting.  He  said  that  he  understood  the  Russian 
Government  to  mean  that  they  would  not  object  to 
the  advance  of  Austria  through  Bosnia  and  the 
Herzegovina  as  far  as  ever  she  pleased,  and  down  to 


AUSTRIAN  DESIGNS  213 

Salonica,  provided  Russia  was  left  to  act  as  she 
thought  fit  on  the  side  of  Bulgaria;  but  he  had  refused 
to  fall  in  with  the  proposal. 

It  seems,  indeed,  probable  enough  that  Russia 
might  have  had  no  insuperable  objection  to  see 
Salonica  annexed  to  Austria,  and  thus  effectually 
to  put  an  end  to  the  expansion  of  Greece  along  the 
shore  of  the  iEgean,  which  all  the  Greeks  look  forward 
to  as  a  heritage  that  must  sooner  or  later  come  to 
them,  but  to  which  Russia  is  entirely  opposed. 
The  Emperor  Nicholas  told  Sir  Hamilton  Seymour 
that  the  one  thing  to  which  he  could  never  be  brought 
to  consent  would  be  the  creation  of  a  powerful  Greece; 
and  Russia,  remaining  true  to  her  traditional  policy 
in  this  respect,  would  have  seen  herself  secured  from 
a  further  extension  of  Greece  as  soon  as  Salonica 
became  Austrian. 

There  was  undoubtedly  in  Austria  a  party,  small 
and  uninfluential,  chiefly  of  the  military  element, 
which  was  eager  for  pushing  on  to  Salonica,  and  these 
blame  Andrassy  for  having  lost  an  easy  opportunity 
of  accomplishing  it. 

However,  though  I  did  not  believe  the  policy  of 
Austria  to  be  guided  by  a  spirit  of  aggrandisement, 
the  result  likely  to  follow  from  the  support  given  to 
the  insurrection  by  the  Imperial  frontier  authorities 
was  evident  enough  to  me,  and  in  my  correspondence 
with  the  Foreign  Office  I  recorded  the  conviction 
that,  if  the  authority  of  the  Sultan  in  Bosnia  was 
put  an  end  to,  it  was  inevitable  that  the  province 
must  pass  into  Austrian  hands. 

The  autonomy,  so  much  talked  of  in  England  by 
those  who  were  profoundly  ignorant  of  everything 
connected  with  the  province,  was  known  by  all  who 
were  acquainted  with  its  circumstances  to  be  a  mani- 
fest impossibility.  In  Bosnia  proper,  without  the 
Herzegovina,  there  were  three  antagonistic  classes — 
the  Orthodox  Slavs,  the  Roman  Catholic  Slavs,  and 


214  THE  DREI-KAISER  BUND  [1876 

the  Mussulmans — the  first  being  the  most  numerous, 
but  the  two  others  combined  forming  considerably 
more  than  a  majority  of  the  whole  population;  and 
neither  of  these  sympathised  with  the  insurrectionary 
movement,  which  in  that  province  was  chiefly  of  an 
agrarian  character.  The  proprietors  were,  for  the 
most  part,  Mahometan,  with  some  Roman  Catholics, 
while  the  land,  under  many  complicated  and  often 
vexatious  tenures,  was  farmed  by  Orthodox  peasants, 
who  were  intent  upon  getting  absolute  possession  of 
the  soil  they  cultivated,  which  the  proprietors  were 
determined  not  to  give  up — the  position  being  not 
unlike  that  of  the  landlords  and  tenants  of  Ireland. 
Nothing  but  the  hand  of  a  controlling  Government 
could  prevent  a  province  so  composed  from  becoming 
the  scene  of  anarchy  and  civil  war ;  and  it  was  certain 
that  Austria  would  never  tolerate  on  her  frontier  a 
state  of  things  of  which  the  effect  would  be  to  disturb 
the  kindred  populations  in  her  neighbouring  Croatian 
and  Dalmatian  Provinces.  It  was  no  less  certain 
that  Austria  would  not  sanction  the  absorption  of 
Bosnia  into  Servia,  which  would  then  only  be 
separated  from  the  Adriatic  by  the  narrow  strip  of 
Austrian  Dalmatia,  and  could  not  be  expected  to 
be  satisfied  or  to  remain  quiet  till  she  had  extended 
herself  to  the  sea. 

It  was  therefore  as  evident  from  the  first,  to  all 
those  who  had  taken  the  pains  to  study  the  question, 
as  it  became  afterwards  to  the  plenipotentiaries  at 
the  Congress  of  Berlin,  that  Bosnia  must  either  remain 
under  the  rule  of  the  Sultan  or  be  made  over  to  that 
of  Austria,  and  that  no  middle  course  was  possible. 

From  the  commencement  of  the  Bosnian  insurrec- 
tion the  people  of  Servia  and  Montenegro  had  naturally 
sympathised  with  their  countrymen,  and  sent  many 
volunteers  to  aid  the  cause,  though  the  two  Govern- 
ments professed  entire  neutrality.  At  last,  however, 
when  the  Porte  appeared  incapable  of  re-establishing 


SERVIA  215 

its  authority,  and  when  the  Northern  Powers  seemed 
inclined  to  favour  the  insurgents,  the  two  principali- 
ties deemed  the  moment  favourable  for  striking 
a  blow  for  their  own  interests,  and  early  in  the 
summer  of  1876  began  to  make  open  preparations 
for  war. 

In  England  most  people  imagined  that  Servia  had 
risen  for  the  purpose  of  shaking  off  the  intolerable 
thraldom  of  the  Turkish  yoke,  and  were  ignorant  of 
the  fact  that  the  administration  of  the  Principality 
was  as  free  and  independent  as  it  could  have  been 
if  relieved  of  the  suzerainty  of  the  Sultan,  which  gave 
him  no  rights  of  interference  within  its  frontiers; 
but  if  the  war,  on  the  part  of  Servia,  was  purely 
aggressive  and  ambitious,  it  was  dictated  by  the 
legitimate  wish  of  a  people  anxious  to  achieve  entire 
independence,  and  encouraged  by  the  not  unnatural 
hope  of  being  able  to  take  advantage  of  the  state  of 
things  to  annex  some  of  the  adjacent  Turkish  insur- 
gent districts. 

There  was,  however,  such  an  entire  absence  of  any 
grievance  against  the  Porte  or  any  avowable  pretext 
for  war,  that  even  the  Russian  Government  had  felt 
bound  to  warn  Prince  Milan  that,  if  any  unprovoked 
attack  upon  Turkey  on  his  part  should  be  followed 
by  defeat,  the  Principality  must  be  prepared  to  bear 
all  the  consequences  of  its  rashness,  as  no  one  would 
interpose  to  save  it  from  the  retribution  it  had  pro- 
voked. This  warning  would,  no  doubt,  have  been 
attended  to  if,  at  the  same  time,  it  had  not  been  inti- 
mated to  the  Servian  Government  that  they  need  not 
attach  much  importance  to  what  was  in  reality  in- 
tended only  as  a  blind  to  the  other  Governments, 
which  were  truly  desirous  of  the  maintenance  of 
peace;  and,  while  the  Russian  Government  officially 
professed  to  discourage  the  warlike  aspirations,  they 
continued  to  assist  the  Servian  preparations  to  the 
utmost  of  their  power,  by  supplying  the  Servians 


216  THE  DREI-KAISER  BUND  [1876 

not  only  with  arms  but  with  soldiers  and  officers  of 
all  ranks,  from  generals  down  to  corporals. 

By  the  beginning  of  July  the  preparations  were 
complete  and  hostilities  broke  out.  Within  a  month 
the  campaign  had  gone  so  much  against  the  Servians 
that  a  suspension  of  hostilities  was  urged  by  the 
Powers  upon  the  Porte,  which  was  thus  prevented 
from  following  up  its  advantages,  when  its  army  might 
have  advanced  to  Belgrade  with  little  prospect 
of  serious  opposition.  The  suspension  of  hostilities 
having  led  to  no  arrangement,  operations  were 
resumed,  and  again  so  much  to  the  advantage  of  the 
Turks  that  nothing  but  active  intervention  on  behalf 
of  the  Servians  could  save  them  from  a  crushing 
defeat;  and  Russia  then  threw  of!  the  mask,  and  in 
spite  of  all  the  declarations  about  leaving  them  to 
bear  the  consequences  of  their  unprovoked  aggression, 
showed  a  determination  to  enter  into  the  contest, 
which  might  very  probably  lead  to  a  European  war. 

To  avoid  this  danger  our  Government  resolved  to 
urge  the  Porte  to  agree  to  an  armistice,  to  be  followed 
by  a  Conference,  at  which  the  conditions  of  peace 
with  Servia  and  Montenegro  and  for  the  pacification 
of  the  insurgent  provinces  could  be  arranged.  This 
time  it  was  not  to  be  a  mere  temporary  suspension  of 
hostilities,  but  a  regular  armistice  for  a  period  of 
'not  less  than  a  month,"  so  as  to  give  time  for  the 
negotiations  that  were  to  follow. 

October  5. — I  was  ordered  to  insist  upon  its  being 
immediately  granted,  and  to  intimate  that  if  it 
was  refused  I  was  to  leave  Constantinople  with  the 
whole  Embassy. 

It  was,  in  my  opinion,  a  mistake  to  mix  up  the 
question  of  peace  with  Servia  and  Montenegro  with 
that  of  the  pacification  of  Bosnia,  and  I  at  once  tele- 
graphed home  to  ask  if  it  was  too  late  to  separate 
them,  but  I  received  no  answer  to  the  enquiry. 
Servia  had  been  hopelessly  beaten  in  the  campaign, 


ARMISTICE  217 

and  would  at  once  have  accepted  a  peace  on  the 
termfrof  the  status  quo  ante,  which  the  Porte  was 
ready  to  grant,  and  a  few  days  would  have  sufficed 
to  arrange  the  outlines  of  the  conditions;  but  the 
pacification  of  Bosnia  and  the  Herzegovina  involved 
so  many  complicated  considerations  that  a  month's 
armistice,  during  which  the  hostile  armies  would  be 
kept  facing  each  other,  with  constant  risk  of  collisions, 
would  clearly  be  insufficient  for  the  purpose. 

Receiving  no  answer  to  my  appeal,  I  energetically 
urged  the  armistice  upon  the  Porte,  which,  remem- 
bering how  injurious  to  its  interests  had  been  the 
former  suspension  of  hostilities  agreed  to  at  the 
instance  of  the  Powers,  was  very  unwilling  to  consent ; 
but  English  influence  at  that  time  was  great,  and 
at  last  I  succeeded  in  extorting  the  promise  of  an 
armistice  of  five  months,  which  would  cover  the 
whole  winter,  during  which  a  settlement  of  all  the 
questions  might  be  effected. 

Our  Government  were  so  thoroughly  satisfied  that 
they  telegraphed  the  warmest  congratulations  to 
me  for  a  success  which  they  said  was  "  entirely  owing 
to  my  exertions/'  and  I  believed,  myself,  that  I  had 
done  good  work.  They  had  asked  for  an  armistice 
of "  not  less  "  than  a  month,  desiring  that  it  should, 
if  possible,  be  longer,  and  I  had  obtained  one  of  five 
months,  which  would  make  the  resumption  of  hos- 
tilities much  less  probable  than  at  the  end  of  the 
shorter  term ;  but,  as  this  did  not  at  all  suit  the  views 
of  the  Russian  Government,  which  had  no  wish  to 
see  a  final  pacification  brought  about,  they  insisted 
on  a  shorter  period  being  fixed,  so  as  to  facilitate 
a  renewal  of  hostilities;  and,  under  a  threat  of  im- 
mediate declaration  of  war  if  the  demand  was  not 
complied  with,  the  Porte  was  obliged  to  give  way 
and  to  grant  an  armistice  of  six  weeks,  which  of 
course  proved,  as  everyone  knew  it  must,  so  insuf- 
ficient that  it  had  afterwards  to  be  renewed. 


218  THE  DEEI-KAISER  BUND  [1876 

The  proceedings  of  the  Russian  Government  are 
often  very  questionable,  though  it  is  seldom  that 
even  they  do  anything  so  monstrous  as  they  did  on 
this  occasion,  by  threatening  a  declaration  of  war 
unless  Turkey  consented  to  shorten  a  suspension  of 
hostilities  which  had  been  asked  for  in  the  interests 
of  its  beaten  enemy;  but  they  were  enabled  to  carry 
out  their  point  because  Austria,  although  thoroughly 
desirous  of  seeing  the  end  of  a  state  of  things  likely 
to  cause  her  the  most  serious  embarrassment,  was 
precluded  from  offering  the  slightest  opposition  to 
the  Russian  designs  by  the  entanglement  in  which 
she  was  involved  by  the  fatal  Drei-Kaiser  Bund. 


CHAPTER  X 

TURKEY— III.:  THE  SALONICA  MURDERS 

In  the  course  of  the  summer  of  1876  two  events 
occurred  that  naturally  aroused  throughout  Europe 
a  feeling  of  indignation,  which,  however  justifiable 
in  itself,  was  carried  to  an  excess  far  beyond  what 
was  warranted  by  a  true  knowledge  of  the  facts. 
The  first  of  these  was  the  '  Salonica  Massacre," 
in  which  the  French  and  German  Consuls  were 
murdered,  and  the  second  was  the  "  Bulgarian 
Atrocities." 

In  both  these  cases,  as  in  almost  all  of  those  where 
the  Mahometans  have  given  way  to  an  outburst 
of  fanatical  violence  against  the  Christians,  it  was 
these  last  who  had  themselves  provoked  it.  Even 
at  times  when  the  most  perfect  goodwill  prevails 
between  Christians  and  the  Mussulmans,  anything 
like  a  slight  upon  their  religion,  or  of  the  nature  of 
an  insult  to  their  women,  will,  in  a  moment,  rouse 
a  quiet  Mahometan  population  to  a  state  of  frenzy, 
rendering  them  capable  of  every  excess;  and  in  the 
case  of  Salonica  both  these  causes  of  provocation 
had  been  given  in  the  most  offensive  form.  The 
Turks  saw  a  woman  professing  herself  a  Mahometan, 
wearing  the  Turkish  yashmak  and  feridgee,  torn, 
before  their  faces,  by  a  Christian  mob,  from  the 
police  who  were  escorting  her,  her  veil  pulled  off — 
of  all  insults  the  greatest — herself  put  into  a  Consul's 
carriage,  driven  off  to  his  house  and  kept  there,  in 
spite  of  the  repeated  demands  of  the  authorities  to 
have  her  restored  to  them. 

219 


220  THE  SALONICA  MURDERS  [1876 

Much  less  than  this  would  have  been  sufficient 
to  exasperate  a  Turkish  mob,  and  there  is  far  less 
reason  for  surprise  that  it  should  have  led  to  the 
loss  of  two  lives  than  that  it  should  not  have  cost 
more;  for,  even  in  this  country — say  at  Glasgow, 
Dublin,  or  Belfast — if  a  girl  about  to  take  the  veil 
was  violently  carried  off  by  a  Protestant  mob,  it 
would  be  well  if  the  riot  that  would  ensue  did  not  lead 
to  worse  consequences. 

The  Helen  who  was  the  cause  of  this  disturbance 
was  a  most  uninteresting  heroine,  being  a  Bulgarian 
girl,  between  twelve  and  eighteen  years  old,  of 
indifferent  character,  belonging  to  a  not  over- 
respectable  family,  in  a  village  at  a  short  distance  from 
Salonica.  She  had  a  Turkish  lover,  and  one  day, 
declaring  that  she  had  become  Mahometan,  she  went 
to  her  lover's  home,  where  his  family  refused  to 
keep  her  till  her  conversion  to  Islamism  had  been 
legally  registered  by  the  authorities.  In  order  that 
this  formality  might  be  gone  through,  she  was  sent 
next  day  to  Salonica  by  rail,  accompanied  by  the 
Hodja  of  the  village  and  an  Arab  woman,  and  her 
mother  went  by  the  same  train.  On  their  arrival  at 
Salonica  some  Greeks  who  were  waiting  for  her  at 
the  station  tried  to  prevent  her  from  going  to  the 
Government  House  to  make  the  official  declaration 
of  her  change  of  religion,  and  three  zaptiehs  came 
to  protect  her  from  them;  but  the  Christian  mob 
became  greater,  and  after  a  scuffle  with  the  police 
they  seized  the  girl,  pulled  off  her  yashmak,  tore  her 
feridgee,  and  took  her  to  the  American  Vice-Consulate 
in  the  Vice-Consul's  carriage. 

Up  to  this  point  the  faults  had  been  entirely  on 
the  side  of  the  Greeks;  if  they  had  allowed  the  girl 
to  be  taken  to  the  Konak  or  Government  House, 
she  would  have  been  examined  by  the  Governor  in 
the  presence  of  her  mother,  when  she  would  have 
been  called  upon  to  declare  publicly  whether  she  was 


MOB  ROUSED  221 

adopting  Islamism  of  her  own  free  will,  or  whether 
coercion  or  compulsion  had  been  used  towards  her. 
Instead  of  this,  they  had  taken  her  by  force  from 
the  hands  of  the  police,  and  had  placed  her  in  a 
Consulate,  where  the  authorities  had  no  right  to 
enter.  It  does  not  appear  that  the  American  Vice- 
Consul  was  himself  a  party  to  the  proceeding,  for 
he  had  been  absent  for  some  days;  but  the  case  is 
much  less  clear  as  regards  his  brother — a  Russian 
subject — who  was  acting  for  him  in  his  absence,  and 
who,  if  not  a  party  to  the  act  itself,  at  least  associated 
himself  with  the  perpetrators  by  refusing  to  divulge 
where  the  girl  was  taken  after  being  removed  from 
the  Consulate. 

The  Turks,  however,  were  now  thoroughly  roused: 
they  armed  during  the  night,  and  it  was  evident  that 
unless  the  girl  was  restored  to  the  authorities  serious 
consequences  must  ensue;  but  neither  the  Governor 
nor  the  police  took  any  measures  of  precaution  to 
prevent  the  conflict,  which  would  have  had  far  worse 
consequences  than  those  which  actually  followed 
if  it  had  not  been  for  the  energy  and  courage  shown 
by  Mr.  Blunt,  our  Consul. 

On  the  forenoon  of  the  day  following  the  capture 
of  the  girl,  a  large  body  of  Mussulmans  went  to  the 
Konak  to  insist  that  she  should  be  brought  back, 
warning  the  Governor  that,  if  he  could  not  deliver 
her  from  the  Christians,  they  would  attack  the 
American  Vice-Consulate  and  rescue  her  themselves. 
The  Pasha  thereupon  sent  a  message  to  the  Vice- 
Consulate  demanding  the  immediate  presence  of  the 
girl  at  the  Council  Chamber,  but  the  Vice-Consul's 
brother  answered  that  she  had  left  the  house,  and 
he  professed  not  to  know  where  she  was.  The 
people  then  got  impatient  and  angry,  and  leaving 
the  Konak,  wTent  to  a  neighbouring  mosque  where 
great  numbers  of  Mussulmans  were  collected  and 
preparing  to  attack  the  American  Consulate. 


222  THE  SALONICA  MURDERS  [1876 

About  the  same  time  M.  Moulin,  the  French 
Consul,  and  Mr.  Henry  Abbott,  the  German  Consul, 
were  seen  going  into  the  Turkish  quarter,  with  what 
object  has  never  been  ascertained,  and,  while  pass- 
ing by  the  mosque  they  were  surrounded  by  the 
Mahometans  and  hustled  into  it.  The  mob  became 
furious  and  menacing,  and  notice  was  sent  to  the 
Governor,  who  immediately  went  to  the  spot,  accom- 
panied by  some  of  the  principal  Turks,  and  entered 
a  room  off  the  mosque,  in  which  the  two  Consuls  had 
taken  refuge.  The  Consuls  promised  to  have  the 
girl  taken  to  the  Konak,  and  Consul  Abbott  wrote 
to  his  brother  Alfred  desiring  him  to  do  so,  and  the 
Pasha  and  the  police  summoned  the  mob  to  disperse, 
but  they  refused. 

In  the  Christian  quarter  of  the  town  no  one  had 
been  aware  of  what  was  going  on,  and  it  was  not  till 
half -past  three  that  Alfred  Abbott  showed  the  note 
he  had  received  from  his  brother  to  Mr.  Blunt,  who 
urged  him  not  to  lose  a  moment  in  getting  the  girl 
sent  to  the  Konak.  He  then  set  off  himself  towards 
the  mosque  to  see  what  he  could  do  for  his  colleagues, 
but  on  approaching  it  he  was  met  by  the  French 
Chancelier,  a  French  Consular  cavass,  and  some 
respectable  Mussulmans,  who  surrounded  and  held 
him  back,  saying  that  the  crowd  was  so  furious 
that  no  European  could  go  near  them  with  safety. 
He  then  ran  to  the  Konak,  which  was  close  at  hand, 
and  wrote  a  note  to  the  American  Consulate,  which 
he  sent  by  his  cavass,  insisting  upon  the  girl  being 
at  once  given  up  to  the  authorities.  She  was  not 
there;  but  Mr.  Alfred  Abbott  had  found  her  and 
handed  her  over  to  Mr.  Blunt's  cavass,  by  whom 
she  was  conducted  to  the  Konak,  though  too  late 
to  save  the  two  Consuls,  who  had  already  been 
murdered.  The  mob  outside  had  torn  down  the 
iron  bars  of  the  window  of  the  room  in  which  they 
were,  and,  getting  in  through  it,  slaughtered  them 


MR.  BLUNT'S  ACTION  223 

in  the  presence  of  the  Governor  and  his  zaptiehs,  who, 
though  remonstrating  and  trying  to  protect  them 
by  persuasion,  never  made  use  of  their  arms  in  their 
defence,  hut  behaved  with  disgraceful  cowardice  in 
standing  trembling  by,  while  they  were  murdered 
before  their  eyes. 

If  Blunt  did  not  succeed  in  saving  the  lives  of 
his  two  colleagues  his  prompt  action  at  least  averted 
a  further  disaster,  for  the  mob,  after  wreaking  their 
vengeance  on  the  two  Consuls,  set  out  with  the 
intention  of  attacking  the  American  Consulate 
where  they  believed  the  girl  to  be  concealed;  but, 
by  the  greatest  good  fortune,  on  their  way  they  met 
Blunt's  cavass,  who  was  conducting  her  to  the 
Konak,  and  thereupon,  after  raising  a  shout  of 
triumph  and  filing  a  kind  of  feu  de  joie,  they  dis- 
persed, and  tranquillity  was  at  once  restored. 

It  was  a  disgraceful  business  from  first  to  last  and 
discreditable  to  everyone  who  had  anything  to  do 
with  it,  excepting  Mr.  Blunt,  whose  conduct  had 
been  admirable — to  the  Christians  first  for  their 
violent  and  illegal  capture  of  the  girl;  then  to  the 
Mussulman  mob,  composed  chiefly  of  the  lowest 
classes;  next,  to  the  Governor  and  police,  who  took 
no  steps  to  prevent  an  imminent  riot,  and  had  not 
the  courage  to  risk  their  lives  to  protect  the  threatened 
Consuls;  and  lastly,  to  the  naval  and  military  com- 
manders, who  showed  no  alacrity  in  obeying  a  tardy 
summons  to  send  men  to  quell  the  disturbance. 

The  Porte  at  once  promised  that  a  prompt  and 
severe  example  should  be  made,  and  within  ten  days 
six  of  the  actual  perpetrators  of  the  murders  were 
publicly  executed,  meeting  their  fate  with  the  calm 
stoicism  always  exhibited  by  fanatical  Mussulmans 
on  such  occasions,  in  the  evident  conviction  that 
they  were  dying  for  the  zeal  they  had  shown  in 
defence  of  their  Faith,  and  that  they  had  thus 
ensured   their   road   to   Paradise.     Altogether   there 


224  THE  SALONICA  MUEDERS  [1876 

were  twelve  persons  condemned  to  death,  and  about 
twenty  others  sentenced  to  penal  servitude,  and  no 
complaint  could  be  made  of  a  lack  of  severity  towards 
those  who  had  taken  an  active  part;  but  the  sentences 
passed  by  the  Court  at  Salonica  upon  the  officials 
who  had  so  grossly  neglected  their  duty  were  disgrace- 
ful, insufficient. 

On  receiving  the  first  news  of  the  murders  the 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  had  asked  all  the  Ambas- 
sadors to  meet  him,  and  gave  assurances  that  every 
satisfaction  should  be  offered.  An  Imperial  Com- 
mission would  be  despatched  at  once  to  Salonica, 
and  delegates  from  the  French  and  German  Embassies 
would  accompany  it. 

As  the  murdered  German  Consul  was  a  British 
subject,  I  insisted  upon  an  English  delegate  being 
associated  with  them,  and  named  Mr.  Blunt  in  that 
capacity.  I  desired  him  to  act  as  closely  as  he  could 
with  his  two  colleagues,  to  see  that  substantial 
justice  was  done,  and  no  favour  shown  to  any  guilty 
person,  whatever  his  rank  might  be;  but  he  had  a 
difficult  task  to  perform  in  making  them  reasonable, 
as  I  had  also  with  my  ambassadorial  colleagues  at 
Constantinople. 

The  German  was  tolerably  calm,  but  the  French- 
man, Baron  Bourgoing,  was  outrageously  vindictive. 
He  did  not  care,  he  said,  for  the  execution  of  a 
dozen  of  the  canaille,  "  mais  il  nous  faut  un  gros 
bonnet."  I  asked  whether  his  delegate  had  intimated 
that  any  "  gros  bonnet  "  had  been  a  party  to  or  had 
connived  at  the  murder,  or  was  suspected  of  more 
than  a  neglect  of  duty  in  repressing  the  riot.  He 
admitted  that  none  was  accused  of  complicity  in  the 
crime,  but  "  l'honneur  de  la  France  "  required  that 
the  penalty  of  it  should  be  visited  upon  some  im- 
portant personage.  I  replied  that  I  did  not  clearly 
see  how  "  l'honneur  de  la  France  "  would  be  advanced 
by  his  insisting  on  the  punishment  of  any  man  for  a 


QUESTION  OF  PUNISHMENTS  225 

crime  of  which  he  was  not  guilty;  that  I  was  ready- 
to  go  as  far  as  he  pleased  in  insisting  that  no  rank 
or  position  should  save  any  one  of  the  accused  from 
the  penalty  due  to  any  crime  that  could  be  brought 
home  to  him;  but  I  must  tell  him  plainly  that  I 
would  not  go  one  inch  further,  or  be  a  party  to 
requiring  a  vindictive  sentence  as  a  mere  satisfaction 
to  his  amour-propre.  He  was  exceedingly  wroth, 
and,  when  he  proceeded  to  hint  that,  as  the  murdered 
men  were  the  French  and  German  Consuls,  I  ought 
not  to  have  a  delegate  at  the  trials  at  all,  I  was  obliged 
to  stop  him  short  and  to  remind  him  that,  as  the 
latter  was  a  British  subject,  I  would  not  for  a  single 
moment  allow  him  to  dispute  or  question  my  right 
to  be  represented  in  the  inquiry  into  his  death  on 
a  footing  of  perfect  equality  with  him  and  our  German 
colleague. 

My  ground  was  too  strong  for  it  to  be  possible  for 
him  to  maintain  his  objection,  but  the  conversation 
was  a  stormy  one,  and  we  had  others  of  a  similar 
character,  in  one  of  which  he  imprudently  betrayed 
the  animus  under  which  he  was  acting;  for,  after 
launching  into  violent  denunciations  of  "  ces  miser- 
ables  Turcs "  for  their  slighting  attitude  towards 
France  during  the  German  War,  he  exclaimed,  "  And 
they  expect  that  we  should  spare  them  now  that 
we  have  an  opportunity  of  paying  them  off  !"  To 
this  I  could  only  reply  that  he  must  not  expect  me 
to  join  him  in  pressing  for  the  execution  of  any  man 
whom  I  did  not  believe  to  deserve  it  out  of  revenge 
for  some  imaginary  previous  slight  upon  France; 
but  the  incident  affords  a  good  example  of  the  lengths 
to  which  the  foreign  representatives  at  Constantinople 
sometimes  go. 

However,  in  the  end  I  carried  my  point:  at  a 
second  trial,  held  at  Constantinople,  the  Governor 
received  a  sentence  of  degradation  and  imprison- 
ment, which  he  fairly  deserved,  while  the  chief  of 

16 


226  THE  SALONICA  MUBDEES  [1876 

the  police  and  some  other  officers,  for  their  gross 
neglect  of  duty,  were  condemned  to  penal  servitude. 
The  French  and  German  Governments  then  declared 
themselves  satisfied,  and  the  matter  ended — 300,000 
francs  being  paid  as  compensation  to  the  family 
of  the  German  Consul,  and  600,000  to  that  of  the 
French  Consul,  their  Ambassador  upon  learning  the 
amount  demanded  for  the  former,  having  at  once 
required  the  double,  in  order  to  show  the  superior 
importance  of  a  Frenchman  over  all  others. 

In  the  treatment  of  the  whole  affair  there  was  an 
entire  absence  of  any  semblance  of  justice  on  the  part 
of  the  French  Ambassador,  and  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  fortunate  accident  of  our  being  able  to  have 
a  delegate  on  the  Commission  a  serious  complication 
would  certainly  have  arisen,  for  the  two  Ambassadors 
had  orders  to  break  off  relations  if  their  demands 
were  not  complied  with,  while  the  exact  extent  of 
the  satisfaction  to  be  exacted  was  left  very  much  to 
them  to  decide.  Baron  Werther,  in  spite  of  his  own 
inclination  to  be  reasonable,  did  not  venture  to  lag 
behind  his  French  colleague  in  his  demands;  and 
the  latter,  unless  he  had  our  word  to  say  in  the 
matter,  would,  I  firmly  believe,  have  insisted  upon 
the  execution  of  the  Governor  or  some  other  "  gros 
bonnet,"  which  the  Porte  could  not  possibly  have 
submitted  to. 

All  this  occurred  while  the  Government  were  in 
the  midst  of  the  difficulties  connected  with  the 
deposition  of  Abdul  Aziz,  the  murder  of  the  Ministers, 
and  the  incapacity  of  the  new  Sultan,  and  it  caused 
a  serious  aggravation  of  them;  while,  at  the  same 
time,  they  had  to  deal  with  the  much  more  serious 
embarrassments  resulting  from  the  Bosnian  insur- 
rection, the  war  with  Servia  and  Montenegro,  the 
attempted  insurrection  in  Bulgaria,  and  its  barbarous 
suppression. 


CHAPTEE  XI 

TURKEY— IV.:  THE  TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT, 

1875-1876 

During  1875  and  1876  we  had  a  series  of  exciting 
occurrences,  and  among  them  the  deposition  and 
death  of  Sultan  Abdul  Aziz.  Till  within  the  last 
four  years  a  marked  and  steady — if  slow — improve- 
ment had  been  going  on  in  every  branch  of  the 
Turkish  administration  under  two  exceptionally  able 
Grand  Viziers,  who  had  established  over  the  Sultan 
an  authority  that  enabled  them  in  a  great  degree  to 
control  his  extravagances  and  to  put  a  check  upon 
the  Palace  favourites,  who  are  at  all  times  the  curse 
of  Turkey;  but  from  the  moment  of  their  deaths, 
which  occurred  at  short  intervals,  everything  at 
once  began  to  go  from  bad  to  worse  at  a  rate  that 
soon  gave  rise  to  universal  discontent.  From  this 
there  sprang  into  existence  a  party  consisting  of 
the  most  enlightened  men,  of  which  Midhat  Pasha  * 

*  Born  in  1822.  Charged  with  the  pacification  of  the  Balkan 
provinces  in  1854.  Was  appointed  Governor  of  Nish,  and  in  1865 
of  the  combined  Vilayets  of  Silistria,  Widdin  and  Nish,  and  insti- 
tuted many  reforms.  Was  recalled  in  1868  through  Russian 
influence  and  appointed  Vali  of  Bagdad  in  1869.  Became  Grand 
Vizier  in  1875;  was  dismissed  and  sent  into  honourable  exile  for 
a  short  time;  recalled  to  Constantinople  and  held  the  posts  of 
Minister  of  Justice  and  President  of  the  Council  of  State,  but 
resigned  on  finding  himself  unable  to  carry  out  a  reforming 
policy.  Took  office  again  under  the  Grand  Vizier  Mehemet  Rushdi 
Pasha;  succeeded  him  as  Grand  Vizier,  and  promulgated  the  ill- 
fated  "  Constitution  "  in  December  of  that  year.  Was  disgraced 
and  deported  by  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid  in  January  1877,  and  after 
years  of  ill-treatment  was  murdered  in  prison  at  Taif  on  April 
26,  18S3.  (See  Life  of  Midhat  Pasha  by  his  son,  Ali  Haydar 
Midhat.) 

227 


-.■ 


228        TUEKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT       [1876 

was  the  leading  spirit,  with  the  object  of  effecting 
the  reforms  that  were  necessary  to  save  their  country 
from  the  ruin  that  was  approaching.  Midhat  himself 
was  a  very  remarkable  man,  as  unlike  as  possible 
to  the  ordinary  Turkish  Pasha,  who  in  every  province 
of  which  he  had  been  Governor  had  distinguished 
himself  by  his  activity  in  developing  its  resources, 
in  putting  down  corruption,  in  smoothing  religious 
animosities,  and  advancing  education.  He  soon  set 
to  work  with  characteristic  energy  for  the  reforms 
that  he  had  at  heart,  and  for  which  he  staked  and 
lost  his  life. 

I  was  well  aware  of  the  general  principles  that 
had  been  adopted  by  the  reformers,  but  at  the  be- 
ginning of  1875  one  of  Midhat's  partisans,  a  Pasha 
who  had  filled  some  of  the  highest  positions  in  the 
State,  informed  me  that  their  object  was  to  obtain  a 
"  Constitution,"  which  was  the  first  time  that  I  heard 
the  word  pronounced.  A  few  days  later  Midhat 
himself  called  upon  me  and  explained  his  views  at 
great  length.  The  Empire,  he  said,  was  being  rapidly 
brought  to  destruction;  corruption  had  reached  a 
pitch  it  had  never  before  attained.  The  service  of 
the  State  was  starved,  while  untold  millions  were 
poured  into  the  Palace;  the  provinces  were  being 
ruined  by  the  uncontrolled  exactions  of  Governors 
who  purchased  their  appointments  at  the  Palace, 
and  nothing  could  save  the  country  but  a  complete 
change  of  system.  The  only  remedy  he  could  per- 
ceive lay — first,  in  securing  a  control  over  the 
Sovereign  by  making  the  Ministers,  especially  as 
regarded  the  finances,  responsible  to  a  national 
popular  Assembly;  secondly,  in  making  this  Assembly 
truly  national  by  doing  away  with  all  distinctions 
of  classes  and  religions,  and  by  placing  the  Christians 
upon  a  footing  of  entire  equality  with  the  Mussul- 
mans; thirdly,  by  decentralisation  and  by  the  estab- 
lishment of  provincial  control  over  the  Governors. 


MIDHAT'S  HOPES  229 

It  must  certainly  be  admitted  that  these  were  en- 
lightened and  statesmanlike  views,  deserving  of  every 
encouragement . 

Midhat  was  not  blind  to  the  difficulties  of  the  task 
he  had  undertaken,  or  to  the  risk  to  himself  that  it 
involved,  for  he  well  knew  the  resistance  the  Sultan 
would  be  certain  to  offer  to  measures  for  the  re- 
striction of  his  own  power,  and  that  he  would  not 
readily  forgive  those  who  proposed  them;  but  he  did 
not  despair  of  success  if,  as  he  hoped,  he  could  rely 
upon  the  hearty  sympathy  of  the  British  nation  for 
an  attempt  to  obtain  something  like  an  imitation 
of  its  own  institutions.  He  dwelt  repeatedly  on  the 
value  of  which  this  sympathy  would  be,  and  on  the 
manner  in  which  his  countrymen  were  now  looking 
to  England  as  the  example  they  hoped  to  follow. 

I  told  him  in  reply  that  I  could  not  doubt  that 
measures  framed  on  the  lines  he  had  laid  down  must 
command  the  approval  and  ensure  the  good  wishes 
of  every  Englishman  who,  like  myself,  had  faith  in 
the  advantages  of  a  popular  check  upon  arbitrary 
power.  And  certainly  the  very  last  thing  I  anti- 
cipated was  that  those  who  in  this  country  make  the 
greatest  parade  of  their  Liberalism  would  be  the  first 
to  cast  contumely  on  men  who,  at  the  risk  of  their 
lives,  were  trying  to  introduce  it  into  theirs,  and  to 
ridicule  their  proposals. 

About  a  week  after  this  conversation  with  Midhat 
Pasha  I  happened  to  have  an  audience  of  the  Sultan, 
when,  being  anxious  to  give  the  reformers  every 
support,  as  well  as  being  convinced  that  matters 
were  becoming  serious,  I  took  the  opportunity  of 
urging  him  to  carry  out  effective  reforms,  and  at 
the  risk  of  giving  him  mortal  offence,  I  added  that 
among  His  Majesty's  subjects  "  a  spirit  had  arisen 
of  which  every  other  European  country  had  had 
experience,  that  the  institutions  of  the  past  were  no 
longer  suited  to  the  present  age,  and  that  everywhere 


230        TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT       [1876 

the  people  were  beginning  to  expect  to  have  a  certain 
control  over  those  who  conducted  their  administra- 
tion." The  Sultan  listened  to  me  without  any- 
outward  mark  of  displeasure,  but  I  could  not  boast 
of  any  effect  produced  by  my  words. 

During  the  next  three  months,  the  discontent  and 
agitation  continued  to  increase,  and  a  crisis  was 
clearly  impending.  The  Softas,  or  law  students,  of 
whom  there  were  a  good  many  thousands  in  Con- 
stantinople, were  known  to  be  arming;  and  the 
foreign  communities  imagining  that  a  massacre  of 
the  Christians  was  imminent,  a  complete  panic  took 
possession  of  the  colonies,  although  the  native 
Christians  remained  without  apprehension.  The  in- 
formation I  had  obtained  respecting  the  movement 
made  me  feel  certain  that  it  was  directed  solely 
against  the  Government,  and  the  only  risk  to  which 
the  Christians  might  be  exposed  would  be  the 
occurrence  of  a  great  popular  tumult  and  conflict 
between  the  progressive  and  reactionary  parties,  for 
I  knew  that  the  Softas  had  fully  accepted  the 
principles  of  their  leaders,  and  counted  on  the 
co-operation  of  their  Christian  fellow-subjects  in 
their  efforts  for  the  common  good,  and  that  there  was 
more  community  and  goodwill  between  the  two 
classes  than  had  ever  before  existed.  I  could  not 
therefore,  in  the  slightest  degree,  share  in  the  extreme 
alarm  shown  at  that  time,  and  on  subsequent  oc- 
casions, by  some  of  my  colleagues  and  many  of  the 
foreign  residents;  and  while  most  of  the  Embassies 
kept  the  iron  gates  of  their  gardens  carefully  closed, 
ours  stood  wide  open  as  usual,  much  to  the  satis- 
faction of  the  Turks,  who  were  gratified  by  what 
they  took  as  a  proof  of  confidence  in  their  orderly 
behaviour. 

The  first  of  the  many  incidents  which  followed 
each  other  closely  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of 
1876  took  place  on  May  10,  when  an  assemblage  of 


SOFTAS  231 

several    thousand    Softas    stopped    Prince    Yussuf 
Izzeddin,  the  Sultan's  eldest  son,  on  his  way  to  the 
Ministry  of  War,  desiring  him  to  return  to  the  Palace 
and   inform   the   Sultan   that   they   demanded   the 
dismissal  of  Mahmoud  Pasha,  the  Grand  Vizier,  and 
of   the   Sheikh   ul   Islam,    the   officially   recognised 
expounder  of  the  Koran.     The  Sultan  did  not  venture 
to  resist  the  demand,  and  the  Grand  Vizier  and  the 
Sheikh  were  dismissed,  the  latter  being  replaced  by 
a  mollah  belonging  to  the  popular  party.     Instead, 
however,  of  Midhat,  as  had  been  hoped  by  the  Softas, 
the   Sultan   named   as   his   Grand   Vizier   Mehemet 
Eushdi  Pasha,  an  old  man  who,  although  universally 
respected,   was  not  possessed   of  the  resolution  of 
character   requisite   for   a   great   crisis;   but,   as   he 
insisted  on  having  Midhat  in  his  Cabinet  as  President 
of  the  Council,  it  was  believed  that  the  latter  would 
be  the  guiding  spirit,  and  general  satisfaction  was 
felt. 

This,  however,  did  not  last  long.  The  Sultan 
quickly  showed  his  determination  to  resist  all  reform 
by  appointing  to  high  posts  several  of  the  worst  of 
the  old  school  of  Pashas,  and  it  then  became  so 
evident  to  me  that  an  attempt  to  depose  him  would 
certainly  very  shortly  be  made,  that  on  May  25  I 
put  my  conviction  upon  record  in  a  despatch  to  the 
Foreign  Office,  in  which  I  wrote  that  '  the  word 
'  Constitution  '  was  in  every  mouth;  that  the  Softas, 
representing  the  intelligent  public  opinion  of  the 
capital,  knowing  themselves  to  be  supported  by  the 
nation — Christian  as  well  as  Mahometan — would 
not,  I  believed,  relax  their  efforts  till  they  obtained 
it,  and  that,  should  the  Sultan  refuse  to  grant  it,  an 
attempt  to  depose  him  appeared  almost  inevitable; 
that  texts  from  the  Koran  were  circulated  proving  to 
the  faithful  that  the  form  of  government  sanctioned 
by  it  was  properly  democratic,  and  that  the  absolute 
authority  now  wielded  by  the  Sultan  was  a  usurpa- 


232   TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT   [me 

tion  of  the  rights  of  the  people,  and  not  sanctioned 
by  the  Holy  Law,  and  both  texts  and  precedents 
were  appealed  to,  to  show  that  obedience  was  not 
due  to  a  Sovereign  who  neglected  the  interests  of 
the  State.  "  The  disaffection  '  (I  said)  "  now  ran 
through  every  class,  from  the  Pashas  down  to  the 
porters  in  the  streets  and  the  boatmen  on  the 
Bosphorus — no  one  thought  any  longer  of  concealing 
his  opinions."  The  same  day  I  reported  that,  not- 
withstanding the  strict  seclusion  in  which  the  Sultan 
kept  his  nephews  confined,  the  leaders  of  the  move- 
ment had  contrived  to  communicate  with  Prince 
Murad,  the  heir-apparent,  who  had  promised  to 
proclaim  a  "  Constitution "  immediately  on  his 
accession. 

When  the  signs  of  what  was  impending  were  so 
evident  to  me,  it  is  inconceivable  that  no  alarm  should 
have  been  felt  at  the  Palace  and  no  precautions 
taken,  and  that  not  one  of  my  colleagues,  including 
General  Ignatiew  with  his  innumerable  spies  and 
secret  agents,  should  have  had  even  a  remote  sus- 
picion of  what  was  going  on;  but  within  a  week  after 
my  reports  were  written  the  deposition  had  been 
effected. 

The  only  persons  who  took  an  active  part  in  it 
were  Midhat  Pasha  and  Hussein  Avni  Pasha,  the 
Seraskier  or  Minister  of  War,  and  the  risk  they  had 
to  run  was  very  great,  for  their  heads  were  at  stake; 
but  they  concerted  their  project  with  skill  and 
executed  it  with  courage  and  resolution.  They 
passed  the  early  part  of  the  night  of  May  29  at 
Hussein  Avni's  country  house  at  Begler  Bey,  on  the 
Asiatic  shore  of  the  Bosphorus;  and  from  there,  an 
hour  or  two  after  midnight,  when  it  was  very  dark 
and  raining  hard,  they  passed  over  to  Constantinople 
in  a  small  caique,  attended  by  a  single  servant,  to  a 
spot  where  they  expected  to  find  carriages  waiting 
for  them,  but  found  to  their  consternation  that  these 


DEPOSITION  OF  ABDUL  AZIZ  233 

had  not  arrived.  They  were  thus  left  standing  for  a 
considerable  time  in  a  drenching  rain,  exposed  every 
moment  to  a  discovery  that  would  have  been  fatal 
to  themselves  as  well  as  to  their  enterprise,  till  at 
last  their  servant  found  and  brought  the  missing 
carriages,  which  had  gone  to  a  wrong  place. 

Then,  as  had  been  arranged,  while  Midhat  Pasha 
proceeded  to  the  Seraskeriat,  *  Hussein  Avni  went  to 
the  barracks  near  the  Sultan's  Palace  of  Dolma 
Baghtche,  where,  as  Minister  of  War,  he  had  no 
difficulty  in  bringing  a  regiment  quartered  in  them 
to  the  Palace,  which  was  surrounded  without  any 
alarm  being  taken.  He  then  knocked  at  the  gates, 
and  desired  the  Kislar  Agha,  the  chief  official  of  the 
household,  to  inform  the  Sultan  that  he  was  a 
prisoner,  and  to  urge  him  to  put  himself  into  the 
hands  of  the  Seraskier  who  answered  for  his  safety. 
The  Sultan's  first  and  natural  impulse  was  to  resist, 
and  it  was  not  till  Hussein  Avni,  who  could  not 
permit  any  delay,  went  in  person  before  him  and 
convinced  him  that  resistance  was  impossible,  that 
he  could  be  persuaded  to  submit  to  his  kismet.  A 
guard  was  placed  over  him  without  a  blow  being 
struck,  and,  as  had  been  agreed  upon,  a  gun  was 
fired  to  announce  to  Midhat  Pasha  at  the  Seraskeriat 
that  the  arrest  of  the  Sultan  had  been  successfully 
carried  out. 

In  the  meantime  Midhat  Pasha's  position  had  been 
intensely  critical.  He  had  no  authority  over  the 
troops,  no  right  to  give  them  orders,  and  he  had  to 
rely  solely  on  the  personal  influence  he  might  be  able 
to  exercise.  He  had  arrived  at  the  Ministry  of 
War  under  the  most  suspicious  appearances — in  the 
dark,  unattended  and  drenched  to  the  skin;  and  it 
was  with  the  utmost  difficulty  that,  by  representing 
himself  as  authorised  by  the  Seraskier,  he  at  last 
succeeded   in   inducing   the   commanding   officer   to 

*  Ministry  of  War. 


234       TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT      [1876 

call  out  his  men  and  draw  them  up  in  the  square. 
He  had  a  long  and  anxious  time  to  pass,  during  which 
at  any  moment,  if  sinister  rumours  arrived  from 
the  Palace,  the  troops  might  assume  a  hostile  attitude ; 
for  it  was  not  till  close  upon  daybreak  that  the  signal 
gun  put  an  end  to  the  suspense  and  announced  the 
successful  accomplishment  of  the  enterprise.  Midhat 
then  came  out  into  the  square  to  harangue  the  troops, 
and  not  a  murmur  of  discontent  was  heard  when  he 
informed  them  of  the  step  that  had  been  taken,  and 
explained  the  necessity  for  it.  He  was  cheerfully 
obeyed  when  he  ordered  a  guard  of  honour  and  an 
escort  to  proceed  to  the  palace  of  Prince  Murad,  to 
announce  to  him  his  accession  to  the  throne,  and 
to  conduct  him  to  the  Seraskeriat,  where  he  was  at 
once  proclaimed  and  saluted  as  Sultan  by  the  troops 
drawn  up  there  and  by  the  people,  who  by  that  time 
had  begun  to  assemble. 

Abdul  Aziz  was  first  taken  to  the  palace  near  the 
Seraglio  Point,  but  was  soon  removed  to  his  new 
palace  at  Tcheregan,  where  he  had  lavished  millions 
of  money  diverted  from  the  service  of  the  State,  and 
where,  by  pulling  down  and  confiscating  the  houses 
of  the  inhabitants  of  the  neighbourhood,  he  had 
largely  added  to  the  discontent  that  led  to  his 
overthrow. 

Notification  of  the  change  of  Sovereign  was  at  once 
telegraphed  to  every  quarter  of  the  Empire,  and 
everywhere  the  news  was  received  with  unbounded 
satisfaction  and  rejoicing;  but,  till  late  in  the  after- 
noon, no  messages  were  allowed  to  pass  either  from 
the  Embassies  or  from  private  persons,  and  our 
Government,  having  heard  nothing  from  me  and 
knowing  nothing  of  what  had  occurred,  telegraphed 
in  some  perplexity  to  ask  me  the  meaning  of  a  telegram 
from  the  Consul  at  Salonica  reporting  that  "  the 
proclamation  of  Sultan  Murad  had  given  the  greatest 
satisfaction   there !"     By   that   time   the   telegraph 


DEPOSITION  OF  ABDUL  AZIZ  235 

offices  were  again  open,  and  I  was  able  to  give  the 
information. 

One  newspaper  correspondent  alone  had  contrived 
to  send  the  news  to  his  employers.  He  was  at  the 
head  of  the  Turkish  Post  Office,  and,  with  a  view  to 
some  possible  emergency,  he  had  arranged  a  private 
code  by  which  he  could  communicate  political  in- 
telligence, while  appearing  to  deal  with  purely  private 
concerns,  and  he  obtained  permission  to  forward  a 
message  "of  an  urgent  private  nature,"  which  ran 
as  follows:  "  The  doctors  have  found  it  necessary  to 
bleed  (depose)  poor  Jane  (Abdul  Aziz).  Grandmamma 
(the  Valide)  is  with  her;  Cousin  John  (Murad)  has 
taken  charge  of  the  business."  This  ingenious  tele- 
gram conveyed,  I  believe,  the  first  intelligence  of 
what  had  occurred  that  reached  any  European 
capital. 

Although  the  deposition  of  the  Sultan  had  been 
effected  quietly  and  without  resistance,  it  remained 
to  be  seen  how  the  news  of  it  would  be  received  by 
the  population  of  the  capital,  and  whether  perhaps 
a  strong  party  might  not  be  found  ready  to  stand  up 
for  the  deposed  monarch,  and  to  dispute  the  right 
of  his  successor.  But  all  anxiety  upon  that  head 
was  quickly  set  at  rest  by  the  universal  exhibition 
of  rejoicing,  which  showed  that  the  misgovernment 
of  the  last  few  years  had  left  Sultan  Abdul  Aziz 
almost  literally  without  friends  among  his  subjects. 
None  regretted  his  fall,  except  the  immediate  de- 
pendents of  the  Palace,  the  satellites  of  Mahmoud 
Pasha,  and  the  Russian  party;  but  these  were  too 
few  in  number  to  venture  to  make  a  show  against 
the  overwhelming  mass  of  public  opinion  arrayed 
on  the  other  side. 

In  order  to  satisfy  the  scruples  of  the  stricter 
Mahometans,  questions  had  been  laid  before  the 
Sheikh  ul  Islam,  the  highest  authority  on  the  Sacred 
Law.     They  ran  as  follows:  "  If  the  First  of  the  true 


236       TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT       [1876 

believers  gives  signs  of  madness  and  of  an  ignorance  of 
political  matters — if  he  spends  the  public  money  on 
himself  in  excess  of  what  the  nation  can  grant  him, 
will  he  not  thus  become  the  cause  of  trouble  and 
of  the  public  ruin  ?  Ought  he  not  to  be  dethroned  ?" 
To  this  the  Sheikh  ul  Islam  answered  by  a  simple 
"  Yes,"  signed  with  his  name,  Hassan  Khairullah, 
and  the  question  and  answer  became  a  Fctwa,  of 
which  every  true  Mussulman  is  bound  to  admit  the 
authority. 

But  if  the  Mussulman  population  were  in  general 
well  satisfied  with  what  had  been  done,  the  Christians 
were  still  more  exultant,  because  they  knew  that 
the  leaders  of  the  movement  had  adopted  the  absolute 
equality  of  all  Turkish  subjects  as  the  fundamental 
principle  of  their  reforms. 

So  far,  everything  had  gone  without  a  drawback 
of  any  kind,  but  this  was  not  fated  to  last  long,  and 
there  came  a  succession  of  unfortunate  occurrences, 
the  first  of  them  being  the  tragical  death  of  the 
ex-Sultan.  In  England  it  seems  to  be  almost 
universally  believed  that  he  was  murdered,  and  the 
suspicion  is  certainly  not  unnatural;  for  when,  on 
the  morning  of  June  4,  five  days  after  his  deposition, 
it  was  announced  that  Abdul  Aziz  had  committed 
suicide  by  opening  the  veins  of  his  arms  with  a  pair 
of  scissors,  there  was  probably  not  a  person  who 
doubted,  any  more  than  I  did  myself,  that  he  had 
in  reality  been  the  victim  of  an  assassination;  and 
my  suspicion  of  foul  play  was  only  removed  in  the 
course  of  the  forenoon  by  the  report  of  Dr.  Dickson, 
the  Embassy  physician,  who  made  me  acquainted 
with  particulars  and  details  which  convinced  me 
that  it  was  unfounded.  Dr.  Dickson  was  a  man  of 
great  intelligence,  of  long  experience  in  the  East,  where 
he  had  seen  much  of  the  secret  and  dark  doings  of 
the  harems.  He  was  of  a  suspicious  rather  than  of 
a  confiding  nature,  little  likely  to  shut  his  eyes  to 


EX-SULTAN'S  DEATH  237 

any  evidence  of  a  crime,  and  he  certainly  would  not 
have  concealed  it  from  me,  his  Ambassador,  if  he  had 
entertained  even  the  remotest  doubt  upon  the  case. 
He  came  to  me  at  Therapia  straight  from  an  examina- 
tion of  the  body,  and  declared  in  the  most  positive 
manner  that  there  was  not  a  doubt  in  his  mind  that 
it  was  a  case  of  suicide,  and  that  all  suspicion  o± 
assassination  must  be  discarded.  He  told  me  that 
early  in  the  morning  he  had  received  a  summons 
from  the  Government  inviting  him  to  go  to  the 
Palace  to  examine  the  body  of  the  ex-Sultan,  and 
to  ascertain  the  cause  of  his  death.  All  the  principal 
medical  men  of  Constantinople  had  received  a  similar 
invitation,  which  eighteen  or  nineteen,  including 
those  of  several  of  the  Embassies,  had  accepted, 
together  with  Turkish,  Greek,  and  Armenian 
physicians. 

Besides  these  there  was  another  English  doctor, 
an  old  Dr.  Millingen,  the  same  who  was  with  Lord 
Byron  when  he  died  at  Missolonghi,  and  who  had 
ever  since  remained  in  the  East  and  was  a  medical 
attendant  of  the  ladies  of  the  imperial  harem.  He 
and  Dickson  went  together  to  the  Palace,  but  found 
on  their  arrival  that  the  other  doctors  had  finished 
their  examination,  and  Dickson  told  me  that  he  and 
Millingen,  being  thus  left  alone,  had  made  as  complete 
an  examination  of  the  body  as  it  was  possible  to 
make.  He  said  that  they  had  turned  it  over  and 
looked  minutely  at  every  part  of  it,  to  see  what 
traces  of  violence  could  be  found  upon  it,  but  there 
were  absolutely  none,  with  the  exception  of  cuts  in 
both  arms,  partly  severing  the  arteries,  from  which 
the  ex-Sultan  had  bled  to  death. 

The  skin,  he  said,  was  more  wonderfully  delicate 
than  he  had  ever  seen  in  a  full-grown  man,  and  was 
more  like  the  skin  of  a  child,  but  there  was  not  a 
scratch,  mark,  or  bruise  on  any  part  of  it,  and  he 
declared  that  it  was  perfectly  impossible  that  the 


238        TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT       [1876 

force  that  would  have  been  required  to  hold  so 
powerful  a  man  could  have  been  employed  without 
leaving  visible  marks.  The  artery  of  one  arm  was 
almost  entirely  and  that  of  the  other  partially 
severed;  the  wounds  being,  in  Dickson's  opinion,  such 
as  would  be  made,  not  by  a  knife,  but  by  sharp- 
pointed  scissors,  with  little  cuts  or  snips  running  in 
the  direction  that  would  be  expected  in  the  case  of 
a  man  inflicting  them  on  himself. 

He  had,  therefore,  no  hesitation  in  accepting  as 
correct  the  account  that  had  been  given  of  the  manner 
of  the  ex-Sultan's  death.  The  wounds,  moreover,  if 
not  made  by  himself,  must  have  been  made  from 
behind  by  someone  leaning  over  his  chair,  where 
no  one  could  have  taken  up  his  position  without  a 
struggle,  of  which  traces  must  have  remained,  or 
without  a  noise  that  certainly  would  have  been  heard 
in  the  adjoining  room,  in  which  the  ladies  were 
collected;  and  it  further  appeared  that  when  the 
ex-Sultan  was  seated  in  the  chair,  in  which  the  pools 
of  blood  proved  him  to  have  bled  to  death,  the  back 
of  his  head  could  be  seen  by  the  women  who  were 
watching  at  a  projecting  flanking  window  in  the 
next  room,  and  to  whom  anyone  getting  behind  the 
chair  would  be  fully  visible. 

From  all  this  Dr.  Dickson  and  Dr.  Millingen  con- 
cluded, as  I  have  said,  without  hesitation  that  the 
ex-Sultan  had  destroyed  himself;  and  when  they  went 
out  and  joined  the  other  physicians,  who  had  ex- 
amined the  body  before  their  arrival  at  the  Palace, 
they  found  that  they  also  had  been  unanimous  in 
arriving  at  the  same  opinion.  Among  them  were 
foreigners  whose  independence  of  character  was 
beyond  dispute,  and  who  would  without  hesitation 
have  given  a  contrary  verdict  if  there  had  been 
reason  for  it;  but  they  one  and  all  came  to  the  same 
conclusion,  and  several  years  later  Dr.  Marouin,  the 
eminent  physician  of  the  French  Embassy,  as  well 


EX-SULTAN'S  DEATH  239 

as  Dr.  Dickson,  published  a  statement  to  the  effect 
that  nothing  had  in  the  slightest  degree  shaken  the 
conviction  originally  arrived  at  by  them.  Even  if 
the  medical  evidence  stood  alone  it  would  seem  to 
be  conclusive;  but  it  is  very  far  from  standing  alone, 
and,  taken  in  conjunction  with  the  statement  of  the 
women  of  the  harem,  it  appears  quite  irresistible. 

Dr.  Millingen,  as  medical  attendant  of  these  ladies, 
went  into  the  harem  and  questioned  them  immediately 
after  examining  the  body.  They  told  him  that,  in 
consequence  of  the  state  of  mind  into  which  the  ex- 
Sultan  had  fallen  since  his  deposition,  every  weapon  or 
instrument  by  which  he  could  do  himself  or  others 
an  injury  had  been  removed  from  his  reach;  that  in 
the  morning  he  had  asked  for  a  pair  of  scissors  to 
trim  his  beard,  which  were  at  first  refused,  but  were 
afterwards,  in  spite  of  the  urgent  remonstrances  of 
the  women,  sent  to  him  by  the  Sultana  Valide,  his 
mother,  who  did  not  like  to  refuse  him,  and  that  as 
soon  as  he  got  them  he  made  the  women  leave  the 
room  and  locked  the  door.  The  women  then  took 
their  station  at  the  projecting  side  window  of  the 
adjoining  room,  of  which  I  have  spoken,  from  which 
they  could  look  into  the  part  of  the  room  in  which 
the  ex-Sultan's  chair  stood,  and  could  just  see  the 
back  of  his  head  as  he  sat  in  it.  While  they  were 
watching,  they  after  a  time  saw  his  head  suddenly 
fall  forward,  and,  alarm  being  taken,  the  Valide 
ordered  the  door  to  be  broken  open,  when  the  ex- 
Sultan  was  found  dead,  with  pools  of  blood  on  the 
floor  and  with  the  veios  of  both  arms  opened.  When 
Dr.  Millingen,  hearing  that  the  Valide  was  in  a 
state  of  distraction,  asked  if  she  would  see  him, 
she  exclaimed  that  it  was  not  the  doctor  but  the 
executioner  who  should  have  been  sent  to  her,  as 
she  had  caused  the  death  of  her  son  by  giving  him  the 
scissors. 

All  these  details  were  given  me  by  Dr.  Dickson  on 


240       TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT        [1876 

coming  straight  from  the  Palace,  and  nothing  can 
be  more  certain  than  that  the  persons  who  would 
have  been  the  very  first  to  believe  in  foul  play — i.e., 
his  mother,  the  Sultanas,  and  ladies  of  the  harem — 
did  not  entertain  a  suspicion  of  the  ex-Sultan  having 
died  otherwise  than  by  his  own  hand. 

Abdul  Aziz  had  an  undoubted  predisposition  to 
insanity  in  his  blood;  the  mind  of  his  brother,  Abdul 
Medjid,  whom  he  succeeded,  had  broken  down  while 
still  a  young  man,  and  his  nephew  Murad,  who 
succeeded  him,  became  hopelessly  insane  immediately 
after  his  accession.  He  had,  to  my  own  knowledge, 
been  out  of  his  mind  on  S3veral  different  occasions; 
the  first  time  as  far  back  as  1863,  when  I  find  it 
mentioned  in  letters  that  I  wrote  from  Athens,*  where 
I  was  on  a  special  mission,  and  on  two  later  occasions, 
within  eighteen  months  of  his  deposition,  I  had 
spoken  of  his  insanity  in  my  letters  to  Lord  Derby, 
reporting  that  I  had  been  told  of  it  as  an  undoubted 
fact  by  one  of  the  Ministers,  with  whom  I  was 
intimate.  At  one  time  he  would  not  look  at  any- 
thing written  in  black  ink,  and  everything  had  to 
be  copied  in  red  before  it  could  be  submitted  to  him. 
Ministers  appointed  to  foreign  Courts  could  not 
proceed  to  their  posts,  and  were  kept  waiting  for 
months  because  their  credentials  could  not  well  be 
written  in  red  ink,  and  he  would  not  sign  those 
written  in  black.  At  another  time  a  dread  of  fire 
had  got  hold  of  him  to  such  a  pitch  that,  except  in 
his  own  apartment,  he  would  not  allow  a  candle  or  a 
lamp  to  be  lighted  in  the  whole  of  his  vast  Palace, 
its  innumerable  inmates  being  forced  to  grope  about 
in  the  dark  from  sunset  to  sunrise ;  and  in  many  other 
respects  his  conduct  passed  the  bounds  of  mere 
eccentricity. 

That  such  a  mind  as  his  should  have  entirely  given 
way  under  the  blow  that  had  fallen  upon  him  need 

*  p.  148. 


INSANITY  241 

hardly  excite  surprise,  and  under  the  circumstances 
there  was  nothing  even  improbable  in  the  fact  of 
his  taking  his  own  life,  especially  as  he  was  known 
to  hold  that  suicide  was  the  proper  resource  of  a 
deposed  monarch;  for  when  the  news  of  the  abdica- 
tion of  the  Emperor  Napoleon  was  brought  to  him, 
his  exclamation  had  been,  "  And  that  man  consents 
to  live  \"  The  person  who  assured  me  that  these 
words  had  been  used  to  him  by  the  Sultan  was 
Musurus  Pasha,  the  late  Ambassador  in  London. 

If  at  the  time  there  was  no  ground  for  a  suspicion 
of  assassination,  there  was  certainly  no  evidence 
deserving  the  slightest  attention  brought  forward 
at  the  iniquitous  mock  trial  three  years  later,  when 
the  ruin  of  certain  important  persons  had  been 
resolved  upon.  To  secure  this  object  two  men — 
a  wrestler  and  a  gardener — were  found  willing  to 
depose  that  they  had  been  hired  by  Midhat  and  his 
colleagues  to  assassinate  the  ex-Sultan,  whom  they 
had  murdered  with  their  own  hands;  and  the  trial 
was  conducted  so  as  to  ensure  a  conviction  in  a  way 
that  scandalised  even  the  opponents  of  the  accused 
Pashas,  and  in  defiance  both  of  the  law  and  practice 
of  the  country.  The  story  told  by  the  two  ruffians 
was  of  itself  an  impossible  one,  and  could  easily  have 
been  shown  to  be  so  if  the  accused  had  not  been 
denied  by  the  packed  court  their  legal  right  of  cross- 
examining  the  witnesses;  and  they  were  found  guilty 
upon  the  unsupported  testimony  of  two  miscreants 
who  gave  their  evidence  without  exhibiting  the 
slightest  anxiety  about  the  position  in  which  they 
were  placing  themselves  by  avowing  that  they  had 
murdered  their  Sovereign  with  their  own  hands; 
and  the  assumption  is  irresistible  that  they  were 
promised  not  only  immunity  but  reward  if  they 
obtained  the  conviction  of  the  eminent  persons  who 
were  esteemed  dangerous,  and  likely  to  stand  in  the 
way  of  the  resumption  by  the  Sultan  of  the  absolute 

17 


242        TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT       [1876 

authority  taken  from  him  by  the  Constitution,  of 
which  he  was  contemplating  the  revocation  that  was 
soon  carried  out.  There  is  no  other  way  of  explaining 
how  after  the  lapse  of  three  years,  when  they  were 
in  no  danger,  two  men  should  voluntarily  come 
forward  and  make  a  confession,  which  if  true  must 
have  cost  them  their  lives,  but  as  it  was  they  ran 
no  risk.  Their  employers  kept  to  their  bargain, 
for  they  were  not  hanged,  and  are  understood  to 
have  enjoyed  comfortable  pensions  ever  since. 

The  Pashas  were  condemned  to  death,  but  the 
sentence  was  commuted,  and  Midhat  was  sent  to 
Jeddah,  on  the  Red  Sea,  whence  accounts  of  him 
were  now  and  then  brought,  showing  that  he  was 
sinking  under  the  rigours  of  his  confinement  and 
from  the  insufficiency  of  the  pittance  of  food  allowed 
to  him;  but,  although  the  general  belief  is  that  he 
ultimately  died  of  starvation,  a  person  who  had 
exceptionally  good  means  of  obtaining  accurate 
information  has  assured  me  that  he  ascertained 
beyond  all  doubt  that  the  impatience  of  his  gaolers 
or  their  employers  did  not  let  them  wait,  and  that 
more  energetic  means  were  resorted  to  for  finally 
getting  rid  of  him.  However  this  may  be,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  he  was  done  to  death  for  his 
efforts  to  regenerate  his  country. 

The  tragical  death  of  ex-Sultan  Aziz  was  destined 
to  prove  fatal  to  the  hopes  of  the  reformers.  Murad 
was  known  at  one  time  to  have  indulged  in  habits  of 
intemperance,  though  he  was  supposed  latterly  to 
have  overcome  them;  but  he  was  of  a  weak  character, 
devoid  of  personal  courage,  and,  when  Abdul  Aziz, 
about  a  month  before  his  deposition,  caused  him 
to  be  closely  confined  to  his  apartment,  he  was 
seized  by  a  constant  fear  of  assassination,  under 
which  he  again  reverted  to  the  abuse  of  stimulants 
more  immoderately  than  ever,  drinking  largely  of 
champagne   "  cut  "   with   brandy.     While   the  con- 


MURDER  OF  THE  MINISTERS  243 

spiracy  that  was  to  place  him  on  the  throne  was  in 
progress  he  was  in  a  state  of  terror,  for  he  knew  that 
its  failure  would  cost  him  his  life;  and  the  news  of 
the  death  of  his  uncle,  ex-Sultan  Abdul  Aziz,  gave 
him  a  shock  that  left  him  in  a  state  of  imbecility, 
which  necessarily  put  a  stop  to  all  the  measures  it 
had  been  intended  immediately  to  carry  out. 

Sensational  events  had  been  succeeding  each  other 
with  startling  rapidity,  but  we  were  not  yet  at  the 
end  of  them.  Within  ten  days  from  the  death  of 
Abdul  Aziz  the  calm  which  had  followed  was  again 
suddenly  disturbed  by  the  news  that  the  Ministers 
had  been  attacked  while  sitting  in  council,  and  that 
some  of  them  had  been  killed  and  others  wounded. 
It  being  naturally  believed  that  a  counter-revolution 
was  being  attempted,  a  complete  panic  took  pos- 
session of  many  people,  and  one  of  my  colleagues, 
with  a  face  as  white  as  a  sheet,  came  into  my  room 
while  I  was  dressing  in  the  morning,  and,  with  his 
teeth  literally  chattering  in  his  head,  asked  me  what 
I  proposed  to  do,  and  whether  I  intended  at  once 
to  go  on  board  the  despatch  boat.  Of  course  I  said 
I  was  going  to  remain  quietly  where  I  was  till  I  knew 
more  of  what  was  taking  place,  and  that  in  all  events 
I  would  do  nothing  calculated  to  cause  a  panic  or 
to  make  one  spread. 

It  soon  appeared  that  there  was  no  cause  for 
alarm,  and  that  the  outrage  had  been  the  act  of  a 
single  man,  who  without  confederates  or  assistants 
had  carried  it  out  with  an  audacity  and  resolution 
for  which  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  parallel. 
He  was  a  young  Circassian  officer  known  as  Tcherkess, 
or  Circassian,  Hassan,  and  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  he  entertained  no  particular  animosity  against 
any  of  the  Ministers  except  Hussein  Avni,  the  Minister 
of  War;  but  that  he  had  maddened  himself  with 
'  bang,"  or  Indian  hemp,  and,  like  an  Indian  running 
amuck,  attacked  everyone  within  his  reach.     He  was 


244       TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT        [1876 

said  to  be  a  near  relative  of  one  of  Abdul  Aziz's 
Khadines,  and  probably  for  that  reason  had  been 
ordered  to  a  distant  post,  which  excited  his  wrath; 
and  that  he  had  originally  no  design  against  any  but 
the  Minister  of  War  seemed  proved  by  the  fact  that 
he  had  first  looked  for  him  at  his  own  house,  and 
learning  that  he  had  gone  to  attend  the  Council 
followed  him  thither. 

Nothing  can  show  more  conclusively  the  perfect 
tranquillity  and  confidence  prevailing  in  a  town 
where  a  revolution  had  just  been  carried  out  than 
the  fact  of  the  Ministers  being  found  at  night  sitting 
quietly  in  Council  without  a  sentry  or  armed  guards 
of  any  kind. 

Tcherkess  Hassan,  who  was  a  noted  pistol  shot, 
using  his  right  or  left  hand  indifferently,  saying  to 
the  doorkeepers  that  he  was  charged  with  a  message 
to  one  of  the  Ministers,  walked  without  hindrance 
into  the  Council-room  and  fired  two  shots  in  rapid 
succession,  the  first  killing  Hussein  Avni  Pasha,  the 
Seraskier,  and  the  second  Reshid  Pasha,  the  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  neither  of  whom  even  moved 
afterwards.  The  other  Ministers  rushed  to  the  doors 
to  escape,  except  the  Minister  of  Marine,  a  gallant 
old  seaman  who  had  given  proofs  of  his  courage 
on  many  previous  occasions,  and,  amongst  others, 
when  he  was  blown  up  with  his  ship  at  Sinope  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Crimean  War.  He  got  behind 
the  assassin  and  tried  to  pinion  him  by  holding  his 
arms  till  he  was  wounded  by  a  yataghan,  and,  being 
obliged  to  let  go,  slipped  through  a  door  into  a  room 
where  the  Grand  Vizier  had  already  taken  refuge, 
and  the  two  old  men  managed  between  them  to 
push  a  heavy  divan  across  the  door,  which  fortunately 
opened  inwards.  Hassan,  failing  in  all  his  efforts 
to  force  the  door,  addressed  Mehemet  Rushdi,  the 
Grand  Vizier,  in  the  most  respectful  terms,  saying, 
"  My  father,  I  assure  you  I  have  no  wish  to  hurt  you, 


TCHERKESS  HASSAN  245 

but  open  the  door  and  let  me  finish  the  Minister  of 
Marine."  To  which  appeal  Mehemet  Rushdi 
answered,  "  My  son,  you  are  far  too  much  excited 
for  me  to  let  you  in  while  you  are  in  your  present 
state,  and  I  cannot  open  the  door." 

While  this  strange  colloquy  was  going  on  the 
unarmed  attendants  made  an  attempt  to  seize 
Hassan,  but  they  were  shot  down  one  after  the  other, 
and  it  was  not  till  a  soldier  came  and  ran  him  through 
the  body  that  he  was  effectually  secured.  He  had 
brought  four  revolvers — two  in  his  boots,  besides 
those  in  his  belt — and  with  these  he  had  succeeded 
in  killing  seven  persons,  including  two  Ministers, 
and  had  wounded  eight  others,  of  whom  one  was 
the  Minister  of  Marine.  He  was  hanged  the  next 
day,  maintaining  an  undaunted  bearing  to  the  end, 
walking,  in  spite  of  his  wound,  to  the  gallows,  where 
he  helped  to  adjust  the  rope  round  his  own  neck, 
and  died  showing  to  the  end  the  reckless  courage 
with  which  he  had  carried  out  the  vengeance  he  had 
resolved  to  take.  It  did  not  appear  that  political 
considerations,  in  addition  to  the  grudge  he  certainly 
bore  against  the  Minister  of  War,  had  in  any  way 
actuated  him;  and  if  the  attack  was  made  with  the 
view  of  setting  on  foot  a  hostile  movement  against 
the  Government  it  signally  failed  of  its  effect,  for 
the  first  excitement  caused  by  it  almost  immediately 
subsided.  But  if,  instead  of  the  Seraskier,  it  had  been 
Midhat  who  had  been  killed,  it  would  have  been  very 
different;  for  it  was  in  him  that  the  whole  hopes  of 
the  Constitutionalists  were  centred,  and  although 
Hussein  Avni  had  played  such  an  important  part 
in  the  deposition  of  Abdul  Aziz,  he  was  never  sup- 
posed to  be  in  his  heart  devoted  to  the  cause  of 
freedom. 

Impatience,  however,  began  to  be  shown  when 
day  after  day  passed  without  any  sign  of  the  pro- 
mulgation of  the  Constitution  so  eagerly  expected. 


246        TURTHSH  REFORM  MOVEMENT       [1876 

The  delay  was  indeed  explained  by  the  new  Sultan's 
illness,  which  was  generally  known,  but  the  nature 
and  gravity  of  his  malady  were  so  carefully  concealed 
as  not  to  be  suspected;  and,  notwithstanding  all 
the  means  of  information  I  possessed,  it  was  a  con- 
siderable time  before  I  ascertained  that  it  was  his 
mind  and  not  his  body  that  was  affected,  and  it 
was  in  fact  only  on  July  22,  more  than  six  weeks 
after  his  accession,  that  the  Grand  Vizier,  perceiving 
that  I  was  aware  of  the  truth,  ceased  to  attempt  to 
conceal  the  state  of  the  case,  and  spoke  openly  of  the 
difficulties  of  the  situation. 

There  was  a  difference  of  opinion  between  him 
and  Midhat  as  to  the  course  the  Government  ought  to 
follow;  for  Mehemet  Rushdi  recoiled  from  the 
adoption  of  any  decisive  step  till  he  was  satisfied 
that  the  condition  of  the  Sultan  was  hopeless,  which 
the  doctors  had  not  yet  pronounced  it  to  be.  Midhat, 
on  the  contrary,  thought  that  the  Government  were 
assuming  too  great  a  responsibility  in  continuing  to 
conceal  the  Sovereign's  condition  from  the  nation, 
and  that  the  state  of  the  case  should  be  laid  before  a 
Grand  Council,  which  would  determine  the  course  to 
be  followed. 

Midhat 's  language  to  me  at  that  time  led  me  to 
conclude  that  he  was  even  prepared  to  take  a  still 
more  decisive  step;  for  he  spoke  with  despondency 
of  the  time  that  was  passing  without  anything  being 
done,  and  of  the  necessity  of  proving  to  the  nation 
and  to  Europe  that  a  new  era  was  being  inaugurated. 

As  a  Grand  Council  had  already  pronounced  that 
an  organic  reform  was  necessary,  he  seemed  ready  to 
promulgate  the  measure  on  the  authority  of  that 
national  decision;  and  he  was  probably  influenced 
in  his  desire  to  take  this  course  by  his  ignorance 
whether  Hamid,  if  called  to  the  throne,  would  consent 
to  the  constitution  on  which  he  had  set  his  heart. 

Murad  had  been  pledged  to  grant  it  immediately 


SULTAN  MURAD'S  ILLNESS  247 

on  his  accession,  but  Hamid,  with  whom  Midhat  was 
not  even  acquainted,  would  ascend  the  throne  un- 
trammelled by  any  such  engagement.  The  objections 
urged  by  the  Grand  Vizier  against  the  course  advo- 
cated by  Midhat  were  certainly  forcible.  The  object 
of  the  proposed  Constitution  was,  he  said,  to  limit 
or  abolish  some  of  the  existing  prerogatives  of  the 
crown,  and  could,  he  asked,  such  a  measure  be  pro- 
mulgated by  the  Ministers  while  the  Sovereign  was 
not  in  a  condition  to  understand  the  nature  of  the 
concessions  he  was  making  ?  Would  not  the  validity 
of  the  new  law  be  contested  by  those  who  were 
opposed  to  it,  and  possibly  by  the  next  Sovereign  ? 
The  hesitation  of  Mehemet  Rushdi  was  very  natural; 
but  the  bolder  course,  instead  of  temporising,  would 
probably  have  been  better  and  safer. 

But  the  Grand  Vizier  had  not  the  strength  of 
character  necessary  for  so  great  an  emergency,  and 
another  month  was  allowed  to  pass.  Even  then  his 
dread  of  assuming  the  responsibility  for  a  step  he 
knew  to  be  inevitable  was  so  great  that  he  attempted 
to  throw  a  portion  of  it  upon  me;  and  it  shows  the 
estimation  in  which  England  was  then  held  at  Con- 
stantinople when  a  Grand  Vizier,  to  strengthen  his 
own  position  among  his  countrymen,  who  are 
peculiarly  sensitive  to  foreign  interference  in  their 
domestic  affairs,  wished  to  support  his  action  in  such 
a  matter  by  obtaining  the  previous  approval  of  the 
British  Ambassador.  Mehemet  Rushdi  came  to  me 
at  Therapia  on  August  25  for  the  purpose,  as  I 
reported  to  my  Government  the  same  day,  of  ob- 
taining my  opinion  upon  the  course  that  should  be 
followed  with  regard  to  the  Sultan;  and  an  Ambassador 
could  hardly  be  placed  in  a  more  delicate  position 
than  by  being  asked  by  the  Prime  Minister  whether 
he  would  recommend  the  reigning  Sovereign  being 
set  aside.  He  said  he  had  lost  all  hope  of  His 
Majesty's  recovery,  and  that  the  head  of  the  lunatic 


248       TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT       [1876 

asylum — whom  I  knew  to  be  a  very  eminent  authority 
— was  of  the  same  opinion;  that  Dr.  Leidersdorff, 
the  well-known  specialist  in  mental  disorders,  who 
had  been  summoned  from  Vienna,  declared  that  it 
would  only  be  after  several  months — -during  which 
he  must  be  kept  perfectly  quiet — that  it  could  be 
pronounced  whether  an  ultimate  cure  might  still 
be  possible.  This  treatment,  however,  could  not 
possibly  be  followed,  for  we  were  drawing  near  the 
time  of  the  Ramazan  and  the  festival  of  the  Bairam, 
during  which  it  was  indispensable  for  the  Sultan 
to  appear  in  public.  At  the  same  time  the  Grand 
Vizier  could  not  get  over  the  feeling  that  Murad 
might  perhaps  recover,  and  it  would  be  cruel  for  him 
to  find  that  he  had  been  put  aside  during  a  temporary 
incapacity,  and  he  wished  to  have  my  opinion  on 
the  matter. 

I  answered  that  "  he  must  not  expect  me,  as  the 
Queen's  Ambassador,  to  express  a  direct  opinion 
upon  a  question  of  such  extreme  delicacy;  that  he 
had  two  duties  to  bear  in  mind,  the  one  to  his 
Sovereign  and  the  other  to  his  country,  and  he  must 
endeavour  to  reconcile  the  two  as  long  as  possible; 
but  when  he  became  convinced  that  the  safety  and 
welfare  of  the  Empire  were  seriously  endangered 
by  the  continued  inability  of  the  Sultan  to  take 
charge  of  its  interests,  that  consideration  must 
overcome  all  others.  Whether  that  moment  had 
come  was  a  question  for  him  and  not  for  me  to 
answer."  This  was  sufficient  for  Mehemet  Rushdi, 
but  in  reporting  the  conversation  to  Lord  Derby  I 
added  that,  "  although  I  was  bound  to  speak  with 
reserve  and  caution  to  the  Grand  Vizier,  I  must  not 
conceal  from  your  Lordship  my  opinion  that  the 
change  should  be  made  with  the  least  possible  delay, 
and  that  the  Empire  should  not  be  allowed  to  continue 
longer  without  a  Sovereign." 

The  next  day  Prince  Hamid  sent  to  me  a  person 


PRINCE  ABDUL  HAMID  249 

in  his  service,  an  Englishman  who  possessed  his 
entire  confidence,  to  bespeak  the  support  of  Her 
Majesty's  Embassy,  and  to  inform  me  of  his  views 
and  opinions.  The  Prince  declared  that  his  first 
wish  was  to  be  guided  by  the  advice  of  Her  Majesty's 
Government.  He  had  had  translations  made  of  our 
Blue-books,  and  he  fully  understood  that  the  friendly 
feeling  of  England  towards  Turkey  must  necessarily 
be  estranged  by  what  had  taken  place  in  Bulgaria, 
and  the  hard  words  that  had  been  used  in  Parliament 
were  not  stronger  than  was  warranted  if  applied  to 
those  who  were  responsible  for  what  had  occurred. 
The  credit  of  the  State  must  be  restored  by  a  rigid 
economy,  so  that  justice  could  be  done  to  the  public 
creditors;  and  a  control  must  be  established  over  the 
finances,  to  put  a  stop  to  the  corruption  reigning  in 
that  department. 

The  professions  of  the  Prince  seemed  fair  enough, 
but  I  was  anxious  to  learn  something  of  his  character 
that  would  enable  me  to  judge  of  the  course  he  was 
likely  to  follow  better  than  from  the  mere  words 
he  might  think  it  desirable  to  employ;  and  upon  this 
point  the  information  I  got  from  his  envoy  was  not 
so  satisfactory.  It  is  true  that,  as  was  to  be  expected, 
he  spoke  in  the  highest  terms  of  the  Prince's  capacity 
and  disposition;  but  when  he  added  that  he  was 
determined  not  to  put  himself  into  the  hands  of  any 
Minister,  and  as  soon  as  possible  to  get  rid  of  those 
then  in  office,  it  was  evident  that  he  bore  no  good 
will  to  the  reformers;  and,  since  he  appeared  to 
intend  to  continue  the  system  of  personal  government, 
which  it  was  their  object  to  limit,  it  seemed  probable 
that  they  would  have  difficulty  in  obtaining  his 
consent  to  the  measures  by  which  the  power  of  the 
Sovereign  was  to  be  restricted  by  a  proper  control, 
and  which,  if  Murad  had  been  able  to  reign,  would 
have  been  at  once  secured. 

So    it    proved.     Abdul    Hamid    was    proclaimed 


250   TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT   [me 

Sultan  on  August  31,  and  six  weeks  later  the  in- 
creasing impatience  of  the  people  was  quieted  by 
the  issue  of  a  proclamation  announcing  a  general 
scheme  of  reform  for  the  whole  Ottoman  Empire, 
but  the  formal  Constitution  that  was  to  give  effect 
to  it  was  still  withheld.     The  proclamation,  however, 
promised  the  establishment  of  a  senate  and  of    a 
representative  assembly  to  vote  the  Budget  and  taxes; 
a  revision  of  the  oppressive  system  of  taxation;  the 
reorganisation  of  the  provincial  administration;  the 
full  execution  of  the  law  of  the  vilayets,  with  a  large 
extension  of  the  right  of  election;  and  other  liberal 
measures,  including  most  of  those  which  the  Porte 
had  been  urged  to  introduce  into  Bosnia  and  the 
Herzegovina.     It  was   issued   on   October   12,   but, 
owing  to  the  difficulties  to  be  overcome  at  the  Palace, 
it  was  not  till  January  25  following  that  the  long- 
expected  instrument  which  was  to  be  the  charter 
of  the  freedom  of  the  Turkish  nation  was  officially 
proclaimed.     Even  then  it  was  greatly  modified  in 
some    essential   particulars    from   Midhat's    original 
project,  and  disfigured  by  the  omission  of  a  clause  for 
which  he  had  struggled  in  vain,  under  which  no 
Ottoman  subject  could  be  sent  into  exile  otherwise 
than  by  the  sentence  of  a  competent  court.     The 
Sultan  positively  refused  to  be  deprived  of  the  power 
of  exiling  any  of  his  subjects  by  his  own  will,  and  it 
turned  out  in  the  end  that  Midhat  Pasha  himself 
was  the  first  person  upon  whom  he  used  it. 

When  the  Constitution  was  proclaimed  Midhat 
Pasha  proposed  to  communicate  it  formally  and 
officially  to  the  Conference  then  sitting  at  Constan- 
tinople, and  if  the  offer  had  been  accepted  the  Powers 
would  have  obtained  an  engagement  little  less  binding 
than  a  formal  treaty,  and  would  have  secured  the 
right  of  authoritatively  insisting  that  its  provisions 
should  be  respected;  and,  though  the  Sultan  might, 
perhaps,  endeavour  to  evade  it,   he  could  not  have 


CONSTITUTION  FLOUTED  251 

ventured,  as  he  afterwards  did,  openly  to  repudiate  it; 
for  lie  would  have  known  not  only  that  the  Powers 
would  sternly  remind  him  of  the  engagement  he  had 
taken  towards  them,  but  that  they  would  be  sup- 
ported in  their  protest  by  the  immense  majority  of 
his  own  subjects. 

If  the  members  of  the  Conference  had  been  at  all 
aware  of  the  serious  nature  of  the  reform  movement 
that  was  in  progress,  and  of  the  earnestness  of  the 
men  who  were  striving  to  carry  it  through,  they  would, 
no  doubt,  gladly  have  seized  the  opportunity  of  for- 
warding  it;    but   most   of   them,    being   profoundly 
ignorant  of  all  that  had  been  going  on  in  the  country 
before  their  own  arrival,  imagined  the  Constitution 
to  have  been  invented  merely  as  a  means  of  providing 
the  Porte  with  a  pretext  for  refusing  to  accept  some 
of  the  proposals  on  which  they  were  insisting.     But 
there  was  something  painfully  ungenerous  towards 
a  people  striving  for  their  freedom,  in  the  comments 
that  were  made  upon  it,  when  all  that  was  valuable 
in  it  was  carefully  passed  over,  while  all  its  short- 
comings were  no  less  carefully  dwelt  upon,  and  in 
the   insinuations   that   were   allowed   to   reach   the 
Palace  that  the  Sultan  would  do  well  to  be  on  his 
guard  against  Midhat  Pasha,  who  had  taken  an  active 
part  in  dethroning  his  two  predecessors,  and  who 
was  now  aiming  at  making  himself  a  dictator.     The 
Liberal  party  in  England,  little  to  its  credit,  adopting 
much  the  same  tone,  thus  did  its  best  to  defeat  the 
efforts  of  a  people  struggling  to  escape  from  an  odious 
despotism;     and    the    day    Lord    Salisbury    and    I 
arrived  at  Dover  on  our  return  from  the  unfortunate 
Conference  we  were  greeted  with  the  news  of   the 
dismissal  and  disgrace  of  Midhat  Pasha,  as  the  first 
result  of  the  triumphant  success  with  which  General 
Ignatiew  had  conducted  it. 

Incomplete  as  the  new  Constitution  undoubtedly 
was,  and  falling  short  of  what  had  been  hoped  for 


252        TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT       [1877 

by  its  authors,  who  had  been  forced  to  be  satisfied 
with  what  they  found  it  possible  to  extort  from  a 
Sovereign  reluctant  to  permit  any  limitation  of  his 
authority,  it  is  certain  that  the  much-derided  Charter 
contained  much  that  must  have  proved  of  inestimable 
value  in  reforming  to  Turkish  administration  in  the 
only  way  in  which  it  ever  can  be  reformed — that  is  to 
say,  by  recognising  in  the  people  the  right  of  control 
over  the  finances,  by  rendering  the  Ministers  and 
officials   responsible   to   the   representatives    of   the 
nation,  by  establishing  the  absolute  equality  of  all 
Ottoman  subjects  of  whatever  race  or  creed,  and  by 
guaranteeing    their    persons    and   property   against 
arrest   or   spoliation.     During   the   time   it   was   in 
existence  the  two  Sessions  of  the  National  Assembly 
which  were  actually  held  were  eminently  encourag- 
ing, and,  although  Midhat  Pasha  and  other  leaders 
of  the  reforming  party  had  already  been  summarily 
banished,  the  representatives  showed  that  they  were 
not  to  be  cowed  by  the  presence  of  officials  or  Palace 
favourites,  and  that  they  were  determined  that  the 
control  they  had  been  granted  over  the  Government 
should  be  a  real  one.     There  was  no  jealousy  between 
the   different   classes   of   which   the   Assembly   was 
composed;  turbaned  Mollahs  and  dignitaries  or  re- 
presentatives of  the  Christian  Churches  being  equally 
bent  upon  making  the  new  institution  work  for  the 
regeneration  of  their  common  country,  criticising  the 
acts  of  the  Government  with  perfect  freedom,  making 
known  the  abuses  going  on  in  the  provinces,  and 
refusing  to  vote  the  money  asked  for  when  they 
deemed  the  amount  excessive  or  the  objects  undesir- 
able.    Nothing  in   fact   could  be    more  promising; 
and  many  of  those  who  in  their  ignorance  of  the 
Turkish  character  had  laughed  at  the  notion  of  an 
Ottoman  Parliament,  prophesying  that  it  would  be 
entirely  subservient  to  the  Government,  and  confine 
itself  to  registering  all  the  proposals  submitted  to  it, 


NATIONAL  ASSEMBLY  253 

now  honestly  expressed  their  surprise  and  admiration 
at  the  fearless  spirit  that  was  exhibited. 

I  had  then  left  Constantinople,  and  cannot  speak 
of  the  proceedings  from  my  own  observation;  but 
the  correspondent  of  The  Times,  as  well  as  those  of 
other  papers,  bore  testimony  to  the  courage  with 
which,  at  almost  every  sitting,  the  Chamber  criticised 
the  acts  of  the  Government  and  called  upon  the 
different  Ministers  to  give  explanations  respecting 
their  conducts  of  their  departments,  and  he  added 
that  the  present  contest  "  was  one  between  the  people 
and  the  Pashas."  No  doubt  this  was  so.  For  two 
years  the  struggle  of  the  people  with  the  Palace  and 
Pashas  had  been  carried  on,  and  the  weight  of 
England,  unfortunately  led  by  those  who  ought  to 
have  been  the  first  to  welcome  the  dawn  of  freedom 
in  another  country,  had  been  thrown  into  the  scale 
of  the  Pashas,  and  against  those  who  were  labouring 
for  the  people. 

Absolute  rulers  and  their  dependents  do  not 
reconcile  themselves  readily  to  the  loss  of  any  of 
their  power,  and  it  is  not,  therefore,  surprising  that 
the  aberration  by  which  England  was  then  possessed 
should  have  encouraged  the  Sultan  to  set  about  the 
recovery  of  his  authority,  and  he  at  once  perceived 
that  his  first  step  should  be  to  deprive  the  reformers 
of  their  leader.  A  blow  might  be  safely  struck  at 
Midhat  Pasha  without  the  risk  of  a  word  of  disap- 
proval from  either  party  in  England,  for  by  the 
Liberals  he  had  been  mercilessly  reviled,  and  he  had 
incurred  the  aversion  of  the  representatives  of  the 
Government  at  the  Conference  of  Constantinople  by 
his  refusal  to  accept  en  bloc  the  whole  of  the  proposals 
which,  under  the  inspiration  of  the  Russian  Ambas- 
sador, had  been  pressed  upon  him.  Consequently 
the  Sultan  eagerly  seized  the  opportunity  of  getting 
rid  of  the  one  man  whose  presence  would  make  it 
difficult  for  him  to  recall  the  reforms  he  had  beep. 


254        TURKISH  REFORM  MOVEMENT       [1877 

constrained  to  grant.  Midhat  Pasha  was  sent  to 
perish  in  exile,  Abdul  Hamid  recovered  his  despotic 
power,  unchecked  by  parliamentary  or  other  control, 
and  Turkey  relapsed  into  a  state  as  bad  as  that  in 
which  it  had  ever  been. 


CHAPTER  XII 

TURKEY— V.:  THE    BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES,  1876 

Nothing  occurring  in  a  foreign  country  within  my 
recollection  ever  caused  in  England  a  sensation  at  all 
to  be  compared  with  that  produced  by  the  Turkish 
excesses  in  Bulgaria  in  the  spring  of  1876 ;  but, 
horrible  as  they  were,  the  excitement  about  them, 
as  about  anything  not  directly  affecting  our  own 
country,  would  soon  have  passed  away  if  the  leaders 
of  the  Opposition  had  not  found  in  them  an  oppor- 
tunity to  make  political  capital  against  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  Government,  and,  by  a  reckless  distortion  of 
facts,  to  rouse  all  the  generous  instincts  of  the  nation 
not  only  against  Turkey  but  against  our  own  Govern- 
ment, which  was  represented  as  scarcely  less  guilty. 
There  had  been,  they  declared,  an  unprovoked  attack 
by  the  fanatical  Mussulmans  of  Bulgaria  on  their 
unoffending  and  peaceable  Christian  fellow-subjects, 
upon  whom  they  had  exhausted  every  form  of  bar- 
barous brutality,  while  our  Government  had  stood 
calmly  looking  on  without  either  expressing  abhor- 
rence for  these  deeds  or  doing  anything  to  procure 
the  punishment  of  those  guilty  of  them. 

All  this  was  entirely  untrue,  excepting  as  regards 
the  fact  that  horrible  atrocities  had  been  committed 
by  bands  of  Mahometans,  for  it  was  the  Christians 
who  had  been  the  first  aggressors,  treacherously 
massacring  unsuspecting  Turkish  zaptiehs  and 
burning  many  Mahometan  villages;  and,  as  soon  as 
it  was  known  that  the  Turks  on  recovering  from  their 
panic  were  retaliating  with  indiscriminate  brutality, 
we  were  incessant  in  urging  the  Porte  to  take  measures 

255 


256         THE  BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES        [1876 

to  protect  the  populations  from  these  iniquities,  and 
to  bring  to  justice  those  who  had  been  engaged  in 
them. 

Over  anything  that  took  place  in  a  Turkish 
province  our  Government  had,  of  course,  absolutely 
no  control,  nor  had  they  more  power  to  procure  the 
punishment  of  offenders  than  every  Government 
which  kept  a  representative  at  Constantinople;  but, 
although  no  one  knew  this  better  than  Mr.  Gladstone, 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  speak  of  the  outrages  much  as 
if  they  had  taken  place  in  British  territory  and  as 
though  we  alone  were  responsible  for  the  impunity 
of  the  perpetrators  of  them. 

There  was,  however,  one  Government  directly 
responsible  for  all  that  occurred  by  encouraging  the 
attempted  insurrection  which  brought  upon  the 
Christians  the  bloody  reprisals  that  horrified  the 
world ;  but  it  was  that  Government  which  was  selected 
for  boundless  eulogy  by  Mr.  Gladstone  when  he 
passionately  urged  that  "  we  should  emulate  the  good 
deeds  of  Russia  and  show  ourselves  her  equal  in  the 
pity  for  suffering  humanity  for  which  she  is  so  con- 
spicuous." From  first  to  last  he  never  once  alluded 
to  the  fact  that  it  was  the  Christians  who  began  the 
work  of  murder  and  the  burning  of  villages,  and  that 
it  was  only  after  finding  themselves  threatened  with 
destruction  that  the  Mussulmans  retaliated,  as  all 
Eastern  populations  will  do,  with  the  savage  ferocity 
of  demons — it  was  the  unspeakable  Turk  indulging 
his  innate  love  of  slaughter  and  his  hatred  of  all 
unbelievers. 

The  almost  official  assistance  given  by  Russia  to 
the  insurgents  in  Bosnia  and  the  Herzegovina  through 
its  Consul-General  and  other  Agents,  together  with 
the  scarcely  less  open  encouragement  of  the  Austrian 
Slav  Generals  in  Dalmatia,  had  effectually  prevented 
the  suppression  of  the  insurrection  in  those  provinces, 
and  encouraged  an  attempt  to  get  up  similar  move- 


> 


OUTBREAK  OF  INSURRECTION        257 

ments  in  other  quarters;  and  during  the  winter  of 
1875—6  Russian  Agents,  directed  by  the  Slav  com- 
mittees of  Moscow  and  Odessa,  which  were  in  close 
alliance  with  General  Ignatiew,  were  busy  in  organising 
a  rising  in  Bulgaria,  where  the  Mahometans  formed 
a  small  minority  of  the  population.  The  province 
was  so  quiet  and  the  two  races  were  living  in  such 
entire  harmony  that  there  were  scarcely  any  Turkish 
troops  in  it;  but  the  movement  broke  out  before  the 
time  fixed  by  the  leaders,  who  had  not  completed 
their  arrangements,  and,  after  some  zaptiehs  had 
been  slaughtered  and  a  number  of  villages  burnt, 
it  was  ferociously  stamped  out  by  the  Mussulman 
population  formed  into  irregular  bands. 

Such,  in  a  few  words,  is  the  broad  outline  of  the 
history  of  the  famous  "  Bulgarian  Atrocities,"  of 
which  I  will  give  some  further  details,  and  will  show 
how  absolutely  groundless  were  the  accusations 
against  Her  Majesty's  Government  and  Embassy  of 
the  callous  indifference  of  which  they  were  accused. 

It  was  on  May  4  that  at  Constantinople  we  first 
heard  that  an  insurrection  had  broken  out  at  Otlakeui, 
a  village  not  very  far  from  Philippopolis,  but,  as  we 
had  no  Consular  Agent  nearer  than  Adrianople,  all 
the  information  I  could  get  had  to  be  obtained  through 
my  colleagues  or  from  indirect  sources,  and  for  some 
time  we  heard  of  nothing  except  of  the  excesses  that 
were  being  committed  by  armed  bands  of  Christian 
Bulgarians.  The  Austrian  Ambassador  told  me  that 
he  had  heard  from  his  Consular  Agent  of  five  villages 
being  burnt  by  the  insurgents,  and  he  looked  upon 
the  affair  as  very  serious;  while  General  Ignatiew, 
who  was  with  us  at  the  time,  and  who,  if  he  had 
chosen  could  have  told  us  a  good  deal  more  about  it, 
as  his  own  Consular  Agent  was  a  prime  instigator 
of  the  movement,  declared  that  it  was  a  mere  dis- 
turbance among  the  workmen  on  the  railway,  many 
of  whom  were  Italians,  and  that  we  should  endeavour 

18 


258         THE  BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES        [1876 

to  persuade  the  Porte  not  to  raise  it  into  undue 
importance  by  the  despatch  of  troops  or  the  adoption 
of  any  extraordinary  measures. 

I  reminded  him  that  this  was  the  very  same  advice 
he  had  given  at  the  beginning  of  the  Herzegovinian 
insurrection,  which  had  unfortunately  been  followed 
by  the  Porte,  with  the  result,  as  we  all  knew,  that  it 
was  still  unrepressed,  and  that  the  authorities  had 
been  obliged  to  resort  to  Bashi-Bazouks  and  ir- 
regulars, whose  mode  of  proceeding  was  notorious, 
and  the  employment  of  whom  was  precisely  what  we 
ought  to  endeavour  to  prevent.  For  my  part,  there- 
fore, I  should  urge  the  Porte  not  to  lose  a  day  in 
despatching  to  the  scene  of  the  disorders  such  regular 
troops  as  they  could  lay  their  hands  upon,  instead 
of  leaving  them  to  be  dealt  with  by  irregulars;  and 
in  this  I  was  warmly  supported  by  Count  Zichy,  the 
Austrian  Ambassador,  notwithstanding  his  usual 
deference  to  his  Russian  colleague,  whose  advice, 
however,  contrary  to  ours,  prevailed  with  a  Grand 
Vizier  notoriously  under  his  influence. 

Two  or  three  days  later  I  received  a  despatch*  from 
our  Vice-Consul  at  Adrianople  giving  the  report  of 
a  Polish  gentleman  of  the  occurrence  at  Otlakeui, 
of  which  he  had  been  eye-witness.  He  said  that  a 
post  of  Turkish  zaptiehs  had  been  fallen  upon  and 
murdered  by  a  party  of  Bulgarians  led  by  Servians, 
who  set  on  fire  the  villages  of  the  peaceful  Bulgarians, 
and  that  in  this  way  twenty  small  villages  had  been 
burnt  and  the  inhabitants  driven  away;  and  that  at 
another  place  called  Sarambey  four  or  five  more 
zaptiehs  had  been  murdered  by  the  insurgents  and 
more  acts  of  incendiarism  committed.  The  authori- 
ties then  collected  and  armed  the  Mussulmans  and 
pursued  the  murderers. 

In  forwarding  this  despatch  to  Lord  Derby  I  said 

*  Not  to  be  confounded  with  the  despatch  improperly  with- 
held. 


CRUELTIES  OF  INSURGENTS  259 

that  there  was,  I  believed,  "  no  doubt  of  the  correct- 
ness of  what  Mr.  Dupuis  states  of  the  leaders  in  the 
affair  at  Otlakeui,  where  the  disturbances  com- 
menced, being  Servians  or  other  emissaries  of  the 
revolutionary  committees,  and  that  the  organisers 
of  the  movement  pursued  the  same  atrocious  policy 
as  was  followed  in  the  Herzegovina  by  burning 
and  ravaging  all  villages,  whether  Mussulman  or 
Christian,  if  the  inhabitants  refused  to  join  them." 
I  added  that  the  last  accounts  received  by  the 
Porte  were  satisfactory,  and  it  was  hoped  that  the 
movement  would  not  spread,  but  that  there  was  one 
danger  '  greatly  to  be  apprehended.  Outrages  com- 
mitted upon  the  peaceful  Mussulmans,  and  especially 
upon  the  women  and  children,  may  provoke  among 
the  Mahometans  a  spirit  of  fanaticism  and  revenge 
likely  to  lead  to  similar  acts  of  retaliation,  which  it 
may  be  very  difficult  to  restrain,  although  the 
Government  declare  their  determination  to  do  all 
in  their  power  to  prevent  it." 

A  few  days  later  the  Vice-Consul  reported  that  the 
burning  of  a  place  called  Bellova  by  the  insurgents 
had  been  attended  with  horrible  cruelties  to  the  small 
Turkish  Guard,  who  had  been  hacked  to  pieces  by  the 
Bulgarians;  that  a  party  of  well-equipped  insurgents 
then  entered  the  village,  "  led  by  priests,  declaring, 
with  crucifixes  in  hand,  that  that  was  the  way  to 
exterminate  Islam  " ;  that  the  authorities  were  showing 
great  activity  in  the  enrolment  and  arming  of  Bashi- 
Bazouks  and  other  volunteers,  who  were  reported  to 
be  committing  the  excesses  that  were  to  be  expected 
from  them. 

The  Consul  at  Rustchuk  also  reported  that  a  Circas- 
sian village  near  Avratelan  had  been  burnt  by  the 
insurgents,  and  that,  if  this  was  so,  the  lawless 
Circassians  would  be  sure  to  take  their  revenge,  which 
it  would  severely  tax  the  Government  to  prevent; 
and,  on  receiving  these  accounts,  I  again  and  again 


260         THE  BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES        [1876 

protested  at  the  Porte  against  the  employment  of 
irregulars,  whose  excesses  I  had  foreseen  and  at- 
tempted to  guard  against  even  before  the  rumour  of 
any  having  been  already  committed  had  reached  me 
or  any  of  my  colleagues  at  Constantinople. 

It  was  not,  in  fact,  till  the  middle  of  June,  six 
weeks  after  we  first  heard  of  the  outbreak,  that  any 
particulars  of  the  occurrences  arrived  there,  when  a 
despatch  from  the  Vice-Consul  at  Adrianople,  which 
in  the  ordinary  routine  of  the  service  ought  at  once 
to  have  been  communicated  to  me,  was  improperly 
withheld  from  me,  and  given  to  the  correspondent  of 
the  Daily  News,  and  the  public  thus  got  from  a 
newspaper  much  that  the  Government  would  have 
learnt  from  me  if  it  had  not  been  for  this  unjustifiable 
proceeding,  of  which  I  remained  in  ignorance  for  two 
years,  when  the  officer  who  had  so  misconducted 
himself  was  already  dead.  But,  although  this  was 
made  the  pretext  for  accusing  me  of  being  either 
indifferent  to,  or  of  endeavouring  to  conceal,  the 
Turkish  misdeeds,  those  who  made  the  charge  knew 
perfectly  well  that  it  was  groundless,  for  the  corre- 
spondent had  expressly  stated  in  his  letter  that  "  the 
Ambassador  has  been  bringing  his  influence  to  bear 
on  the  Turkish  Government  to  put  a  stop  to  these 
proceedings " ;  but,  with  this  statement  before  his 
eyes,  Mr.  Gladstone  did  not  scruple  to  declare  that, 
without  the  letter  in  the  Daily  News,  "  we  might  have 
been  left  in  the  dark  up  to  the  present  moment." 
His  object  being  to  raise  a  popular  clamour  against 
the  Government,  he  had  no  hesitation  in  concealing 
from  the  public  or  in  misrepresenting  their  real  action 
at  Constantinople.  Every  scrap  of  information  that 
reached  me  was  at  once  sent  home,  and  my  published 
despatches  of  May  28,  June  8  and  19,  reported  the 
repeated  protests  I  had  been  making  against  the 
employment  of  Bashi-Bazouks,  who,  I  said,  had  been 
acting  "  with  cruelty  and  brutality/'  and  it  was  not 


ATROCIOUS  RETALIATIONS  261 

till  June  23  that  the  Daily  News  published  the  famous 
letter  from  whch  it  was  pretended  the  first  knowledge 
of  the  excesses  was  derived. 

It  was  true,  however,  that  that  letter,  embodying 
the  concealed  report  of  the  Adrianople  Vice-Consul, 
first  brought  to  light  the  fact  that  the  slaughter 
of  men,  women,  and  children,  and  other  outrages 
of  all  kinds,  had  taken  place  upon  a  scale  of  which  not 
an  Embassy  at  Constantinople  had  previously  the 
slightest  conception;  but,  although  the  real  horrors 
might  have  been  supposed  sufficient  to  satisfy  the 
most  greedy  appetite  for  them,  there  was  besides 
a  systematic  manufacture  of  imaginary  ones;  and 
every  word  published  anonymously  in  a  newspaper 
was  accepted  without  question  in  England  and  made 
the  text  of  declamatory  speeches,  in  which  the 
Government  and  the  Embassy  were  attacked  with  a 
violence  that  could  not  have  been  exceeded  if  they 
had  themselves  been  the  guilty  parties.  Story  upon 
story,  without  even  a  foundation  of  truth,  circulated 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  country — ■ 
sixty  young  women  burnt  in  a  barn,  a  hundred 
children  massacred  in  a  school,  cartloads  of  heads  of 
women  and  children  triumphantly  paraded,  young 
women  and  children  publicly  sold,  were  among  the 
inventions  greedily  accepted  and  believed,  and  those 
who  ventured  to  say  that  they  were  untrue  or  that 
the  reports  were  exaggerated  were  denounced  to 
public  execration  as  sympathising  with  the  ill-doers. 

At  Constantinople,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  it  was 
next  to  impossible  to  ascertain  what  was  true  and 
what  was  false ;  for,  while  on  the  one  side  the  Turkish 
denials  were  not  to  be  trusted,  the  assertions  made 
on  the  other  were  quite  as  little  veracious ;  and  on  one 
occasion  I  had  an  opportunity  of  seeing  how  persons 
of  perfectly  good  faith  were  entrapped  into  endorsing 
the  imaginary  sensational  stories  of  the  ingenious 
manufacturers  of  horrors.     A  young  Greek  arrived 


262         THE  BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES        [1876 

one  morning  in  a  fearful  state  of  excitement  and 
misery  at  the  house  of  some  respectable  English 
residents  at  Scutari,  saying  he  had  just  escaped  from 
a  village,  which  he  named,  where  his  brothers  and 
sister  had  been  brutally  maltreated  and  murdered 
by  some  Turks,  from  whom  he  had  with  much 
difficulty  contrived  to  escape.  The  Englishmen  had 
questioned  and  examined  him  closely,  and  sent  him 
up  to  me  at  Therapia,  saying  they  were  convinced  of 
the  truth  of  his  story,  which  he  repeated  so  circum- 
stantially that  I,  like  them,  believed  it,  in  spite  of 
the  declaration  of  the  Minister  of  Police,  who  happened 
to  call  while  the  man  was  with  me,  that  no  such 
occurrence  could  have  taken  place  without  his  being 
informed  of  it,  at  a  village  within  a  day's  journey  of 
Constantinople,  and  in  a  part  of  the  country  where 
there  had  been  no  disturbance.  He  promised  to  have 
the  matter  at  once  investigated;  but  I,  not  choosing 
to  trust  to  the  Turkish  enquiry,  desired  one  of  our 
own  Dragomans  to  go  to  the  scene  of  the  outrage 
and  to  let  me  know  the  whole  truth  about  it.  At  the 
end  of  two  days  he  came  back,  having  found  the 
village  perfectly  quiet,  no  disturbance  of  any  kind 
having  taken  place.  The  young  Greek  had  disap- 
peared when  he  found  his  story  was  to  be  tested: 
it  was  a  lie  from  beginning  to  end,  and  but  for  the 
accident  of  the  scene  of  it  having  been  laid  at  a  place 
within  my  reach,  it  would  have  gone  down,  like 
so  many  other  stories  not  less  false,  as  a  monstrous 
and  well-established  case  of  outrage,  in  which  I 
myself  fully  believed. 

The  most  curious  example  of  British  credulity 
was  that  afforded  by  Canon  Liddon  and  Mr.  Malcolm 
McColl,  of  whose  perfect  good  faith  there  cannot  be  a 
question ;  while,  at  the  same  time,  it  is  at  least  equally 
certain  that  they  never  really  did  see  that  which  they 
affirmed  themselves  to  have  seen.  Their  statement 
was  that  from  the  deck  of  an  Austrian  steamer  on  the 


CANON  LIDDON  AND  MR.  McCOLL      263 

River  Save,  which  separates  Servia  from  the  Herze- 
govina, they  distinctly  saw  the  body  of  a  man,  still 
alive,  writhing  on  a  stake  close  to  a  Turkish  guard- 
house; while  similar  stakes  were  observed  to  be  pre- 
pared for  the  same  purpose  near  other  guard-houses. 

Many  hideous  and  revolting  murders  were  com- 
mitted during  the  insurrection,  both  by  the  Mussul- 
mans and  the  Christians,  and  I  knew  of  one  case,  that 
took  place  on  the  frontiers  of  Montenegro,  in  which 
the  latter  showed  a  barbarity  that  could  not  have 
been  exceeded  by  the  most  ferocious  of  their  adver- 
saries, when  a  young  doctor  was  flayed  alive,  while 
his  companion  had  his  limbs  chopped  off  one  by  one. 
The  victims  in  this  case  were  Christians,  and  they 
were  thus  treated  by  the  "  Christian  "  insurgents 
because  they  refused  to  join  them;  but  it  would  be  as 
unjust  to  suppose  that  such  deeds  were  countenanced 
by  the  Prince  of  Montenegro  as  it  is  to  insinuate 
that,  when  committed  by  the  Mussulman  bands, 
they  were  countenanced  by  the  Turkish  authorities. 
The  two  races  have  precisely  the  same  savage  pro- 
pensities, which  they  equally  give  way  to  in  the  time 
of  war;  and  if  the  reverend  gentlemen  had  stated 
that  they  had  seen  a  man  on  the  stake  at  some  un- 
frequented place  at  a  distance  from  any  Turkish 
post,  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  feel  sure  that 
they  had  not  come  upon  one  of  the  victims  of  the 
bands  of  ruffians  then  in  arms.  But  their  statement 
admits  of  no  such  explanation,  for  they  declared  that 
the  scene  lay  close  to  a  Turkish  guard-house,  while 
at  the  other  guard-houses  stakes  had  been  prepared 
for  similar  purposes.  The  impalement  must  there- 
fore have  been,  not  a  murder  committed  by  unknown 
miscreants,  but  a  brutal  execution  carried  out  by 
Turkish  officials. 

What  it  was  that  they  took  for  an  unfortunate 
wretch  writhing  on  the  stake  will  probably  never  be 
known  and  can  only  be  guessed  at.     In  those  countries 


264         THE  BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES       [1876 

poles  with  notches  on  them  are  erected,  up  which  the 
keepers  of  cattle  climb,  and  are  constantly  seen 
leaning  over  the  top  of  them  while  watching  the 
herds,  and  the  same  thing  is  done  by  the  fishermen 
when  watching  to  see  a  shoal  of  fish  enter  their  nets, 
and  the  men  on  the  top  look  very  much  as  if  they 
were  transfixed  by  the  pole,  as  is  well  known  to  all 
who  have  lived  long  on  the  Bosphorus;  and  the  most 
plausible  conjecture  is  that  it  was  one  of  these  men 
who  was  pointed  out  as  an  impaled  Christian  by  some 
practical  joker  on  board  the  Austrian  steamer,  who 
must  have  thoroughly  enjoyed  the  success  of  his 
hoax. 

The  officers  of  those  steamers,  which  run  weekly 
on  the  Save,  are  Austrian,  and  almost  all  Slavs, 
sympathising  with  the  Christian  insurgents  and 
hostile  to  the  Turks,  and  they  were  under  strict  orders 
to  report  anything  unusual  they  observed  on  their 
voyages;  but  when  questioned  upon  this  matter,  they 
declared  that  neither  on  the  occasion  in  question  nor 
on  any  other  had  they  seen  a  man  on  the  stake,  and 
that,  moreover,  they  had  never  even  heard  of  such  a 
case.  The  sight,  which  must  have  filled  with  horror 
everyone  on  board  the  steamer,  had  only  been  visible 
to  Canon  Liddon  and  Mr.  McColl !  All  endeavours  to 
find  a  single  other  witness  among  those  who  were 
present  with  them  proved  fruitless,  and  it  is  not 
surprising  that,  when  their  account  reached  Con- 
stantinople, even  the  most  vehement  of  the  adver- 
saries of  the  Turks  joined  in  the  shout  of  derision 
with  which  it  was  received;  for  they  well  knew  that 
for  very  many  years  there  had  been  no  such  thing 
as  an  execution  by  impalement. 

The  occurrence  was  said  to  have  taken  place  in  the 
diocese  of  the  well-known  and  energetic  Slavophil, 
Bishop  Strossmeyer,  and  he  was  written  to  by  one 
of  the  Consuls  in  Bosnia,  who  asked  if  he  had  heard 
of  this  or  any  other  case  of  impalement.    His  answer 


ME.  GLADSTONE'S  OPINION  265 

was  truly  Jesuitical,  and  lie  fenced  with  the  question 
without  answering  it:  his  conscience  would  not  allow 
him  to  go  the  length  of  affirming  that  he  had  ever 
heard  of  such  a  case,  but  he  could  not  bring  himself 
to  give  the  Turks  the  satisfaction  of  saying  that  he 
never  had,  so  he  contented  himself  with  declaring 
that  there  was  no  barbarity  of  which  they  were  not 
capable. 

But  Mr.  Gladstone's  conscience  was  not  so  tender, 
and  his  language  on  the  subject  was  altogether  un- 
scrupulous. He  declared  that  the  question  whether 
Mr.  Liddon  and  Mr.  McColl  were  mistaken  or  not  was 
a  matter  of  perfect  indifference,  and  that  the  in- 
credulity that  had  been  expressed  about  what  had 
been  treated  as  Canon  Liddon's  hobgoblin  story  "  only 
showed  the  gross  ignorance  of  those  who  ought  to  know 
better."  Having  thus  asserted  his  own  superior 
knowledge,  he  proceeded  to  point  out  to  his  more 
ignorant  hearers  that  the  matter  was  immaterial, 
since  it  was  only  a  question  "  as  to  one  more  or  less, 
because  impalement  is  a  thing  familiarly  practised 
in  Turkey.  It  is  one  of  the  venerated  institutions 
of  the  country,  and  every  sound  Turk  would  feel 
that  you  were  depriving  him  of  a  part  of  his  patrimony 
if  the  practice  of  impalement  were  to  be  given  up. 
There  is  no  doubt  about  it  any  more  than  there  is  any 
doubt  about  any  other  fact  familiar  to  history." 
His  words  no  doubt  answered  their  turn  by  stimu- 
lating the  popular  indignation  against  the  Turks 
which  he  was  labouring  to  arouse,  since  few  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  hearers  would  think  of  questioning 
anything  that  he  laid  down  as  being,  to  his  own 
knowledge,  an  indisputable  matter  of  fact;  but  there 
never  was  anything  more  absolutely  untrue  than 
the  statement  that  impalement  is  familiarly  practised 
in  the  Turkey  of  our  day,  or  that  it  is  an  institution 
to  which  all  true  Mussulmans  would  cling. 

Admitting   that  Mr.   Gladstone,   even   under   the 


266         THE  BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES       [we 

storm  of  passionate  excitement  that  then  possessed 
him,  would  not  deliberately  make  a  statement  which 
he  knew  to  be  false,  and  that  he  must  in  charity  be 
assumed  to  have  spoken  in  ignorance,  the  excuse  is, 
at  the  best,  a  very  lame  one;  for  if  he  had  not  at  the 
time  been  utterly  reckless,  before  making  such  a 
sweeping  charge  and  sneering  at  what  was  said  by 
"  those  who  ought  to  know,"  he  would  have  felt  that 
in  common  decency  he  should  try  to  ascertain  the 
truth  for  himself;  and  he  would  have  had  no  difficulty 
in  doing  so.  If  he  had  applied  to  anyone  who  had 
resided  in  Turkey  of  late — merchants,  Consuls, 
Christian  missionaries  and  Bible  colporteurs,  of  all 
men  the  least  likely  to  conceal  Mahometan  misdeeds — 
they  would  have  told  him,  without  one  exception, 
that  impalement  had  for  many  years  past  been  as 
obsolete  a  punishment  in  Turkey  as  the  pillory  and 
branding  are  in  England,  or  hanging  for  the  theft 
of  a  sheep  or  of  five  shillings.  I  have  questioned 
many  and  never  got  but  one  answer. 

In  England,  where  anything  that  takes  place  is 
known  everywhere  in  a  few  days,  it  is  not  easy  for 
people  to  realise  how  such  things  as  had  happened 
in  Bulgaria  could  remain  for  weeks  unknown,  not 
only  at  Constantinople  but  at  places  like  Adrianople 
and  Philippopolis,  where  there  was  equal  ignorance 
about  some  of  the  worst  atrocities  which  had  occurred 
within  short  distances  from  them.  Such,  however, 
was  the  case,  and  under  instruction  from  Lord  Derby 
I  sent  Mr.  Baring,  a  Second  Secretary  of  the  Embassy, 
to  investigate  the  facts  on  the  spot.  He  did  his  work 
thoroughly  and  conscientiously,  and  reduced  to 
about  a  tenth  the  number  of  the  victims  given  by  the 
English  newspapers;  but  although  even  Baring's 
estimate  was  afterwards  found  to  have  at  least  doubled 
the  reality,  when  hundreds  of  those  he  had  counted 
among  the  slain  returned  to  their  villages,  he  fully 
established  the  fact  that  in  many  places  there  had 


BARING'S  REPORT  267 

been  awful  and  wholesale  massacres  and  brutality 
on  a  scale  of  which  no  one  at  Constantinople  had 
previously  had  a  conception,  and  which  were  more 
than  sufficient  to  justify  a  feeling  of  universal 
execration.  His  report  was  consequently  cited  at 
every  indignation  meeting  held  in  England;  but  there 
was  one  portion  of  it  which  was  never  by  any  chance 
quoted  or  alluded  to,  for  it  too  effectually  disposed  of 
all  that  had  been  said  of  the  peaceful  Christians  having 
been  wantonly  fallen  upon  by  the  Mussulmans,  and 
it  showed  too  clearly  what  had  been  the  part  played 
by  Russia,  who  had  been  so  loudly  extolled  by  our 
humanitarians. 

He  stated  that  he  had  ascertained  that  a  conspiracy 
for  an  insurrection  on  a  very  large  scale  had  been 
hatching  for  many  months;  that  Mahmoud  Pasha, 
the  Grand  Vizier,  commonly  known  as  Mahmoudo^* 
from  his  notorious  subserviency  to  the  Russian 
Ambassador,  had  been  warned  of  it,  and  took  no 
steps  to  avert  it  by  sending  a  few  regular  troops  into 
the  province,  and  that  the  insurrection  broke  out 
prematurely,  before  the  general  organisation  was 
complete,  and  began  by  the  sudden  and  unprovoked 
massacre  of  Turks  at  several  different  places.  Then 
followed  the  arming  of  the  Mussulman  populations, 
and  the  bloody  stamping  out  of  the  insurrection  by 
them  and  the  Bashi-Bazouks  with  the  savage  re- 
taliation that  the  attack  upon  them  was  pretty  sure  to 
provoke.  Baring  showed  that  the  insurrection  had 
been  planned  and  fomented  by  Russian  agents,  who 
went  about  persuading  the  deluded  peasants  that,  as 
soon  as  they  rose,  they  would  be  supported  by  a 
Russian  army,  which  would  enable  them  to  exter- 
minate the  Turks ;  and  it  was  through  the  influence  of 
the  Russian  Ambassador  that  the  Porte  delayed  the 
despatch  of  the  troops  which,  if  they  had  reached  the 
disturbed  districts  in  time,  would  have  prevented  the 
excesses. 


268         THE  BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES         [1876 

The  Russian  Vice-Consul  at  Philippopolis  was  one 
of  the  principal  organisers  of  the  movement  and 
proposed  to  carry  it  out,  as  had  been  done  in  Herze- 
govina, by  surprising  and  massacring  isolated  parties 
of  unsuspecting  Turks,  and  by  burning  all  the  villages 
of  which  the  inhabitants  refused  to  take  part  in  it; 
but,  although  nothing  could  be  more  clearly  proved 
from  Baring's  report  than  that  Russia,  and  Russia 
alone,  had  been  responsible  for  all  that  had  taken 
place,  the  speeches  at  the  indignation  meetings  may 
be  searched  in  vain  for  any  allusion  to  this  fact. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Mussulmans  had 
ample  ground  for  the  belief  that  their  own  destruction 
was  intended,  and  it  was  under  the  combined  in- 
fluence of  panic  and  of  a  thirst  for  vengeance  upon 
those  who  had  attacked  them  that  they  gave  way  to 
the  excesses,  of  which,  as  I  have  already  said,  all 
these  populations,  whether  Mussulman  or  Christian, 
are  capable  in  times  of  excitement. 

The  Bulgarians  themselves,  who  since  their  liber- 
ation have  earned  well-deserved  admiration,  and  are 
naturally  a  quiet,  industrious  people,  showed  on 
the  advance  of  the  Russian  army  that  they  could 
surpass  the  Turks  in  the  treatment  of  their  enemies; 
and  the  atrocities  of  which  they  had  been  the  victims 
sank  into  insignificance  when  compared  with  those 
of  which  they  themselves  were  guilty.  The  helpless 
Turks,  the  women  and  children  who  perished  with 
every  form  of  outrage,  were  as  a  thousand  for  every 
hundred  of  the  Bulgarians  who  had  been  similarly 
treated;  and  these  horrors,  which  went  on  for  very 
many  months,  were  only  stopped  by  the  strong  hand 
of  Prince  Alexander,  while  the  excesses  of  the  Turks 
had  only  lasted  a  fortnight,  or  at  the  utmost  three 
weeks,  while  their  passions  were  at  the  highest. 

Little  was  heard  in  this  country  of  the  excesses 
of  the  Bulgarians;  for  when  the  victims  were  Turks 
and  the  misdoers  Christians,  our  so-called  humani- 


CRUELTY  OF  ALL  RACES  269 

tarians  had  not  a  word  to  spare  of  pity  for  the  first 
or  of  blame  for  the  latter.  The  truth  is  that  in  those 
countries  the  populations,  of  whatever  creed,  exhibit 
in  time  of  war  savage  propensities  of  which  those  who 
have  only  seen  them  in  times  of  tranquillity  would  not 
believe  them  capable.  In  ordinary  life  the  Turks 
are  humane  and  considerate  of  women  and  children, 
but  when  thoroughly  aroused  there  is  nothing  they 
will  not  do. 

Then,  again,  the  Christian  Montenegrins,  of  whose 
good  qualities  everyone  who  has  visited  their  country 
speaks  with  admiration,  act  in  time  of  war  like  perfect 
savages;  and  the  pictures  that  used  to  be  drawn  of 
them  during  the  Turkish  crusade  had  about  as  much 
likeness  to  the  originals  as  Fenimore  Cooper's  descrip- 
tions had  to  the  real  American  Red  Indian.  During 
the  war  such  few  Turkish  prisoners  as  were  brought 
to  the  Montenegrin  capital  of  Cettinje  were  treated  as 
well  and  with  as  much  humanity  as  they  could  have 
been  by  any  civilised  people;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  Montenegrins  are  not  apt  to  give  quarter  to  their 
enemies,  those  who  fall  into  their  hands  being 
generally  put  to  death  with  every  kind  of  barbarity, 
of  which  I  heard  many  well-authenticated  examples. 
The  Prince  did  all  in  his  power,  but  without  success, 
to  get  his  people  to  abandon  their  custom  of  cutting 
off  the  noses  of  their  killed  or  wounded  enemies,  which 
they  kept  as  trophies  exactly  as  the  Indians  kept  scalps. 

On  one  occasion  a  wounded  young  Montenegrin 
was  brought  into  the  hospital  at  Cettinje,  and,  on 
being  put  into  a  ward  under  a  sympathising  Austrian 
lady,  asked  that  the  bag  containing  his  valuables 
should  be  put  under  his  pillow  for  safety.  In  a  day  or 
two  the  ward  was  found  not  to  be  as  sweet  as  usual, 
and  this  getting  worse,  a  search  was  made,  when  the 
mischief  was  found  to  proceed  from  the  bag  of  the 
young  patient,  who  had  put  his  much  prized  noses 
with  his  other  treasures  under  his  pillow  ! 


270         THE  BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES        [1S76 

A  nose  had  an  additional  value  if  it  had  a  portion 
of  the  upper  lip  attached  to  it,  to  show  by  the  moustache 
that  it  had  belonged  to  a  man  and  not  to  a  woman. 
About  a  hundred  and  forty  Turkish  soldiers  thus 
mutilated — a  very  small  proportion,  of  course,  of  the 
poor  wretches  operated  upon,  of  whom  by  far  the 
greater  number  died — were  at  one  time  in  the  hospital 
at  Constantinople,  where  the  sight  of  them  greatly 
changed  the  feelings  of  persons  who  had  come  from 
England  with  warm  sympathies  for  the  mild  Christians 
who  were  defending  themselves  from  the  savage 
Turks,  and  who  now,  for  the  first  time,  became  aware 
of  what  the  former  were  capable.  If  those  who 
bore  the  marks  of  this  barbarous  treatment  had 
been  Bulgarians  or  Montenegrins  the  pictures  of 
the  victims  of  the  abominable  Turk  would,  no 
doubt,  have  been  exhibited  at  every  indignation 
meeting,  and  made  the  theme  of  denunciation 
against  the  Mussulman  monsters;  but,  as  the  muti- 
lated wretches  were  only  Turks,  not  a  word  was  said 
about  it. 

The  destruction  of  villages  in  Bulgaria,  and  the 
death  of  so  many  of  the  men  belonging  to  them,  having 
left  many  women  and  children  houseless  and  destitute, 
committees  for  their  relief  were  organised  at  Con- 
stantinople, and  we,  still  believing  at  that  time  that 
most  of  those  who  were  descanting  so  loudly  on  the 
sufferings  undergone  by  the  Christians  at  the  hands 
of  the  Turks  were  actuated  by  a  genuine  feeling  of 
humanity,  expected  liberal  subscriptions  from  them 
to  the  relief  funds;  but  they  quickly  undeceived  us, 
for,  to  our  surprise  and  disappointment,  the  donations 
were  deplorably  meagre,  and  by  far  the  greater 
proportion  of  them  came  from  those  who  did  not  join 
in  the  outcry  against  Turkey  and  our  Government. 
There  was  no  doubt  of  the  prevalence  of  destitution 
and  suffering  among  the  Bulgarian  population, 
though  much  of  it  was  caused  by  the  destruction  of 


VITUPERATION  IN  THE  PRESS  271 

the  villages,  burnt  by  the  insurgents;  but  the  humani- 
tarians had  exhausted  their  stock  of  charity  in  words, 
in  scathing  denunciations  of  the  unspeakable  Turk, 
in  harrowing  descriptions  of  the  destitution  and 
sufferings  of  the  unfortunate  Bulgarians,  and  they 
had  nothing  to  spare  for  the  relief  of  those  sufferings 
— of  wordy  philanthropy  a  vast  deal,  of  practical 
philanthropy  scarcely  any. 

After  this  it  would  be  difficult  indeed  to  believe 
that  those  who  spoke  the  loudest  were  inspired  by 
any  higher  feeling  than  a  wish  to  damage  the  Govern- 
ment, as  whose  agent  I  had  to  bear  the  brunt  of  much 
vehement  vituperation;  and  the  game  of  the  party 
was  shown  by  Mr.  Freeman  when  he  wrote  {Daily 
News,  September  5):  "  No  doubt  Sir  Henry  Elliot  is 
not  the  greatest  culprit,  but  he  is  the  greatest  whom 
any  possible  form  of  proceeding  allows  us  to  touch. 
We  cannot  ask  Lord  Derby  to  dismiss  himself:  we 
can  ask  him  to  dismiss  his  subordinate."  This  was 
plain  speaking,  and  others  followed  suit,  among  them 
Canon  Liddon,  who,  irritated  perhaps  by  the  ridicule 
attaching  to  his  impalement  story,  declared,  in  a 
spirit  not  over-seemly  in  a  clergyman,  that  it  would 
be  "  necessary  to  replace  Sir  H.  Elliot  by  a  diplomat 
of  human  rather  than  of  Turkish  sympathies." 
Canon  Liddon  had  formed  his  opinions,  as  I  was  after- 
wards told  and  fully  believe,  entirely  from  the  speeches 
and  newspaper  articles,  without  himself  reading  any 
of  the  official  correspondence;  for  had  he  done  so,  he 
would  have  found  it  difficult  to  find  in  my  despatches 
a  single  word  showing  sympathy  for  Turkish  misdeeds 
or  of  indifference  to  the  maltreatment  of  the  Christians, 
but  much  that  would  have  satisfied  him  that  I  had 
done  all  in  my  power  for  the  latter.  The  only  mistake 
that  I  am  conscious  of  was  that  at  first,  in  common 
with  all  my  colleagues,  I  disbelieved  the  excesses 
to  be  on  such  a  frightful  scale  as  was  afterwards 
proved  to  be  the  case,  though  this  had  in  no  way 


272         THE  BULGARIAN  ATROCITIES        [1876 

relaxed  my  endeavours  to  get  them  put  an  end  to 
and  the  perpetrators  punished. 

A  misinterpreted  speech  of  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
alluding  to  "  bazaar  gossip  '  about  outrages,  had 
offended  public  feeling,  and  created  a  disposition 
to  listen  to  the  accusations  brought  against  the 
Government  of  a  callous  indifference  to  them,  and  of 
a  desire  to  conceal  the  misdeeds  of  the  Turks,  for 
which  there  was  no  real  foundation.  That  our 
Government  and  the  Embassy  did  everything  that 
could  be  done,  both  for  the  protection  of  the  Bulgarians 
and  to  obtain  the  punishment  of  those  who  had 
maltreated  them,  was  to  be  seen  plainly  enough  in  the 
published  official  correspondence;  but  few  among  the 
public  took  the  trouble  to  look  at  the  Blue  books; 
they  were  contented  to  accept  the  statements,  un- 
supported except  by  anonymous  newspaper  writers, 
which  were  put  forward  by  those  whose  sole  object 
was  to  damage  the  Government,  and  who  did  not 
scruple  to  suppress  anything  that  would  weaken 
their  attack. 

Party  spirit  often  leads  to  unreasonable  attacks 
upon  a  Government,  but  it  seldom  goes  the  length  to 
which  it  was  carried  on  this  occasion.  The  attempt 
to  make  the  Government  responsible  for  what  hap- 
pened in  a  foreign  country  was  in  itself  sufficiently 
absurd,  but  there  was  something  outrageous  in  the 
way  in  which  Lord  Derby,  and  myself  especially, 
were  held  up  to  public  execration  as  monsters  destitute 
of  every  human  feeling,  only  influenced  by  a  blind 
love  of  the  Turks  and  by  the  desire  to  conceal  or 
excuse  their  misdeeds. 

I  am  not,  of  course,  an  impartial  judge  with  regard 
to  my  own  actions,  but,  looking  calmly  at  them  after 
a  lapse  of  seventeen  years,  I  am  still  at  a  loss  to  see 
what  I  omitted  to  do  that  was  possible  for  a  person  m 
my  position;  and  I  have  at  least  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing  that  I  did  very  much  more  than  was  done 


A  CLEAE  CONSCIENCE  273 

by  all  my  colleagues  combined,  though  they  were 
precisely  similarly  placed.  Before  any  outrages 
occurred  I  urged  the  Porte  to  take  measures  to  prevent 
them;  when  they  occurred  I  insisted  that  they  must 
be  stopped;  and  I  was  incessant  in  pressing  for  the 
punishment  of  the  guilty.  It  would  be  difficult  for 
those  who  most  virulently  attacked  me  to  say  what 
more  I  could  have  done. 


19 


CHAPTEK  XIII 

TURKEY— VI.:  THE  CONFERENCE  OF  CONSTAN- 
TINOPLE 

This  ill-starred  Conference,  which  directly  paved 
the  way  for  the  Eusso-Turkish  War  and  for  the 
unrest  which  has  ever  since  prevailed  in  European 
Turkey,  is  not  a  subject  upon  which  I  have  any  dis- 
position to  dwell;  but  I  have  at  least  the  satisfaction 
of  knowing  that  I  never  was  supposed  to  approve 
what  was  done,  and  that  I  was  ultimately  recognised 
as  having  been  right  in  my  objections  to  the  course 
followed. 

Before  the  end  of  the  summer  of  1876  complete 
tranquillity  was  restored  in  Bulgaria :  the  Mussulmans 
had  recovered  from  the  panic  under  which  they  had 
committed  their  excesses,  any  renewal  of  which  was 
made  impossible  by  the  presence  of  a  large  body  of 
regular  troops;  the  devastated  villages  were  being 
rapidly  rebuilt — partly  by  the  Government  and 
partly  by  public  subscriptions — and  the  dispersed 
inhabitants,  including  many  hundreds  who  had  been 
counted  among  the  slain,  were  quietly  returning  to 
their  houses. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  no  progress  was  made 
towards  repressing  the  insurrection  in  Bosnia;  Servia 
and  Montenegro  were  still  at  war  with  Turkey,  and, 
although  Montenegro  had  obtained  some  advantages, 
Servia,  in  spite  of  all  the  underhand  Russian  assistance 
in  money,  arms  and  officers,  was  so  hopelessly  beaten 
that  the  Russian  Government,  which  had  originally 
declared  that  if  the  Servians  chose  to  make  an  un- 
provoked attack  they  would  leave  them  to  their  fate, 

274 


PEOPOSED  CONFERENCE  275 

now  felt  it  necessary  to  come  forward  in  their  defence. 
They  proposed  therefore  that  a  Conference  of  the  Great 
Powers  should  be  held  at  Constantinople,  at  which, 
without  the  presence  or  participation  of  a  Turkish 
representative,  conditions  should  be  laid  down  and 
enforced  upon  the  Sultan;  but  none  of  the  other 
Governments  were  willing  to  fall  in  with  a  proposal 
which  was  regarded,  especially  by  England  and 
Austria,  as  an  outrageous  attack  upon  the  inde- 
pendence of  Turkey. 

While  rejecting  the  Russian  proposal,  however, 
Her  Majesty's  Government  declared  their  readiness 
to  take  the  initiative  of  inviting  a  general  Conference 
of  the  Powers,  including  Turkey,  at  which  it  was 
hoped  that  it  might  be  possible  to  come  to  some 
arrangement;  and  in  the  invitations  sent  to  the  other 
Governments  the  object  of  this  Conference  was  stated 
to  be :  first,  the  conclusion  of  peace  between  Turkey, 
Servia,  and  Montenegro,  and,  secondly,  the  pacification 
of  Bosnia  and  the  Herzegovina  by  means  of  a  system 
of  local  or  administrative  autonomy,  which,  as  far 
as  was  applicable,  should  be  extended  to  Bulgaria, 
so  as  to  ensure  the  populations  there  from  further 
maladministration . 

The  Porte  was  very  unwilling  to  agree  to  the  holding 
of  a  Conference,  and  only  gave  way  after  I  had  been 
instructed  to  give  the  most  solemn  assurance  that 
the  independence  of  Turkey  should  be  fully  respected, 
that  the  programme  should  be  strictly  adhered  to, 
no  departure  from  it  being  permitted;  and  had  this 
engagement  been  observed,  we  should  not  have  been 
open  to  the  just  reproach  of  the  Turks  of  having 
gone  back  from  our  pledged  word,  and  the  result 
would  have  been  very  different. 

When  the  question  of  a  Conference  was  first  mooted 
I  had  written  to  Lord  Derby  that,  if  there  was  to  be 
any  change  in  the  policy  I  had  hitherto  been  in- 
structed to  carry  out,  I  was  so  completely  identified 


276   CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE  [we 

with  it,  and  my  views  were  so  well  known  at  Con- 
stantinople, that  I  was  the  last  person  who  ought  to 
be  employed  in  the  negotiation.*  I  was,  moreover, 
so  unwell  from  overwork  as  to  be  almost  unfit  for 
business,  and  was  most  anxious  at  once  to  avail 
myself  of  the  leave  of  absence  I  had  already  asked 
for.  But  the  Government  had  no  thought  of  changing 
their  policy,  and  Lord  Derby  so  strongly  urged  me 
to  remain  for  the  Conference,  on  account  of  the 
"  importance  they  attached  to  my  judgment  and 
experience,"  that  I  unwillingly  consented  to  do  so, 
which  I  certainly  would  not  have  done  if  I  had  sus- 
pected the  line  that  was  to  be  followed. 

The  announcement  that  Lord  Salisbury  was  to 
be  our  First  Plenipotentiary  gave  me  unmixed 
pleasure,  for,  never  doubting  for  a  moment  that  we 
should  act  in  harmony  in  our  common  task,  I  rejoiced 
at  the  weight  that  would  be  given  to  the  British 
representatives  by  the  presence  of  a  Cabinet  Minister 
of  his  eminence,  and  certainly  the  last  thing  that  I 
could  anticipate  was  that  he  would  almost  at  once 
become  a  docile  instrument  in  the  hands  of  the 
Russian  Ambassador. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  recognise  in  the  Minister 
who  has  for  so  many  years  directed  the  Foreign 
Affairs  of  the  country  with  such  admitted  ability  the 
same  person  as  he  who  so  conspicuously  failed  in  his 
first  diplomatic  campaign;  but  Lord  Salisbury,  when 
appointed  First  Plenipotentiary  to  the  Conference, 
was,  although  a  Cabinet  Minister,  under  the  dis- 
advantage of  being  profoundly  ignorant  of  the  ground 
on  which  he  had  to  work,  and  of  knowing  nothing  of 

*  In  vol.  vi.,  p.  13,  of  The  Life  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  he  com- 
plains on  September  10,  1875,  "  Not  one  of  Her  Majesty's  Am- 
bassadors is  at  his  post."  This  was  incorrect ;  Sir  Henry  Elliot 
was  at  Constantinople,  and  it  was  three  years  of  incessant  and 
anxious  work  which  had  temporarily  injured  his  usually  fine 
health. 


LORD  SALISBURY'S  ARRIVAL  277 

Turkish  affairs  or  of  the  people  with  whom  he  had 
to  deal;  and  he  may  have  believed  that  there  was 
more  of  exaggeration  than  of  truth  in  what  was 
said  of  the  intrigues  of  Russia  and  the  falseness  of 
her  Ambassador.  The  moment  was  exceptionally 
favourable  for  an  English  Cabinet  Minister  to  acquire 
influence  over  the  Turkish  Government;  a  reforming 
Grand  Vizier  was  trying  to  establish  a  popular  control 
over  the  Palace,  and  the  sympathy  and  good  wishes 
of  the  British  nation  were  counted  upon,  while, 
at  the  same  time,  Russia  was  more  than  usually  the 
object  of  the  hatred  and  distrust  of  the  Turks,  who 
knew  that  it  was  through  her  machinations  that  their 
troubles  in  Bosnia  and  Bulgaria,  and  their  war  with 
Servia  and  Montenegro  had  been  brought  about, 
and  that  she  had  mobilised  her  army  and  was  only 
waiting  for  some  favourable  pretext  for  attacking 
them. 

It  was  obviously  our  policy  to  exert  all  our  in- 
fluence to  induce  the  Porte  to  make  all  the  con- 
cessions that  could  reasonably  be  required,  so  as  to 
deprive  Russia  of  the  pretext  she  was  seeking;  while 
it  was  no  less  obviously  the  policy  of  Russia  to 
obtain  our  concurrence  in  putting  forward  such 
extreme  demands  as,  if  consented  to  by  Turkey, 
would  have  the  effect  of  permanently  weakening  her, 
or,  if  rejected,  would  afford  the  wished-for  excuse 
for  declaring  war.  It  had  seemed  to  me  so  clear 
that  this  would  be  the  Russian  game  that  when 
the  Conference  was  decided  upon  I  expressed  my 
conviction  to  the  Government  that  it  would  be 
the  one  played,  and  played  it  was  with  complete 
success. 

On  the  day  of  Lord  Salisbury's  arrival  at  Con- 
stantinople I  had  a  long  conversation  with  him,  in 
which  I  laid  before  him  that  he  would  find  the  Turks 
well  disposed  to  listen  to  any  advice  given  them  by 
a  Cabinet  Minister  belonging  to  a  Government  which 


278       CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE     [1876 

had  shown  themselves  friendly  to  them.  Psaid  that 
I  knew  some  people  believed  that  nothing  more  was 
required  than  that  England  and  Russia  should  agree 
as  to  the  demands  to  be  made  upon  the  Sultan,  but 
that  my  knowledge  of  the  Turks  made  me  certain 
that  this  was  a  dangerous  delusion,  which,  if  acted 
upon,  would  assuredly  wreck  the  Conference.  1 
further  told  him  that  General  Ignatiew  was  still  bent 
upon  having  a  preliminary  exclusive  Conference  on 
the  Russian  plan,  to  draw  up  proposals  to  be  imposed 
upon  the  Sultan,  and  this,  Lord  Salisbury  emphatically 
said,  "  must  be  resisted";  but  the  resistance  did  not 
last  long,  for,  in  spite  of  the  recorded  disapproval 
of  our  Government,  the  General  almost  immediately 
carried  his  point,  and  put  an  end  to  the  hope  of  the 
Conference  leading  to  any  good  result.  After  my 
conversation  with  Lord  Salisbury  on  the  day  of  his 
arrival  he  never  once,  of  his  own  accord,  entered 
upon  the  subject  upon  which  we  were  associated, 
hinted  at  the  course  he  proposed  to  follow,  or  in- 
formed me  of  the  arrangements  he  was  making 
with  General  Ignatiew,  till  I  learnt  them  at  the 
meetings  when  they  were  communicated  to  our 
foreign  colleagues. 

I  accompanied  Lord  Salisbury  to  the  audience 
given  him  by  the  Sultan  a  few  days  after  his  arrival, 
when  he  was  received  with  a  cordiality  and  confidence 
that  nothing  could  exceed.  Abdul  Hamid,  who  had 
been  but  a  few  months  on  the  throne,  spoke  of  his 
own  inexperience  and  of  the  difficulties  by  which 
he  was  surrounded;  he  was  convinced  of  the  friendly 
disposition  of  Her  Majesty's  Government,  and  was 
anxious  to  recover  the  sympathy  of  England,  which 
he  knew  had  been  forfeited  by  recent  events  in 
Bulgaria  previous  to  his  accession;  he  expressed  an 
earnest  and  evidently  sincere  wish  to  be  greatly 
guided  by  Lord  Salisbury's  advice,  and  if  Lord 
Salisbury    would    let    him    know    the    concessions 


LORD  SALISBURY  AND  THE  SULTAN    279 

which  Her  Majesty's  Government  thought  he  should 
make  and  the  reforms  to  be  carried  out,  he  would 
find  him  prepared  to  go  as  far  as  a  regard  for  his 
independence  and  the  interests  of  his  Empire  should 
make  it  possible. 

Lord  Salisbury  very  naturally  answered  that  he 
could  not  at  that  moment  tell  His  Majesty  what 
measures  might  be  necessary,  as  he  must  first  have 
some  further  communication  with  his  colleagues, 
but  he  hoped  in  a  very  few  days  to  be  in  a  position 
to  speak  more  plainly;  and  it  was  then  arranged  that 
as  soon  as  Lord  Salisbury  had  had  the  communications 
with  his  colleagues  he  had  spoken  of,  he  should  send 
to  the  Palace,  and  His  Majesty  would  expect  him 
and  me  to  dine  with  him  the  same  day,  when  the 
state  of  affairs  would  be  fully  discussed. 

It  was  supposed  that  this  would  be  in  two  days,  or 
three  at  furthest,  but  day  after  day  passed  and  no 
sign  was  made;  message  after  message  came  from  the 
Palace  asking  when  we  were  coming  to  dine  with  the 
Sultan  according  to  the  invitation  given  and  accepted, 
and  the  messengers  were  sent  away  without  an  answer, 
excuse,  or  explanation.  At  that  time  there  was  a 
general  belief — doomed  to  be  fatally  disappointed — 
that  the  reign  of  Abdul  Hamid  was  to  be  the  dawn 
of  a  new  era  of  prosperity,  and  when  the  contemptuous 
slight  that  had  been  passed  upon  him  became  known 
it  gave  rise  among  all  classes  of  his  subjects  to  a 
feeling  of  resentful  indignation  that  was  fatal  to  our 
influence,  and  led  to  our  being  regarded  as  in  league 
with  the  enemy  who  was  aiming  at  the  ruin  of  the 
Empire;  and,  indeed,  it  was  not  difficult  to  detect  the 
hand  of  the  Russian  Ambassador  in  what  had  occurred. 

At  a  second  interview  with  the  Sultan  it  was  very 
possible  that  Lord  Salisbury  might  obtain  the  promise 
of  all  that  he  was  empowered  by  his  Government  to 
ask,  which  would  be  fatal  to  the  schemes  of  General 
Ignatiew,  who  successfully  prevented  it  from  taking 


280       CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE     [1876 

place,  and  who  soon  showed  that  he  had  no  inten- 
tion that  the  attention  of  the  Conference  was  to 
be  directed  to  the  subjects  for  which  it  had  been 
summoned. 

At  the  first  meeting  of  the  foreign  representatives 
in  the  preliminary  exclusive  Conference,  General 
Ignatiew  made  a  speech  announcing  that  he  was 
going  to  lay  before  us  resolutions  that  had  been  drawn 
up  by  Lord  Salisbury  and  himself  on  the  principle 
of  endeavouring  to  "  faire  semblant  de  maintenir  la 
fiction  de  l'independance  du  Gouvernement  Turc." 
The  independence  which  our  Government  had  pledged 
itself  to  respect  was  to  be  treated  as  a  fiction,  and  the 
principle  thus  avowed  by  the  General  was  inexorably 
followed  to  the  end.  The  resolutions  proposed  to  us 
did  not  even  touch  upon  the  means  of  putting  an  end 
to  the  Bosnian  insurrection  or  upon  making  peace 
with  Servia  and  Montenegro,  which  were  to  have 
been  our  first  and  principal  duty,  but  were  confined 
to  an  elaborate  scheme  for  the  administration  of 
Bulgaria.  It  had  been  prepared  by  General  Ignatiew 
for  some  time,  and  I  had  sent  it  home  before  the 
arrival  of  Lord  Salisbury,  who  of  course  had  had 
nothing  to  do  with  its  preparation  and  whose  ignorance 
of  the  complicated  Turkish  provincial  administration 
made  him  little  competent  to  judge  of  its  merits  or 
demerits;  and  the  new  boundaries  to  be  fixed  to 
Vilayets,  Sandjaks,  Muderliks,  or  Nahies,  and  the 
attributions  to  be  assigned  to  Caimakams  and 
Mutessarifs,  were  to  be  decided  by  a  set  of  diplomatists 
of  whom  hardly  one  had  even  heard  these  names  a 
week  before,  and  who  were  profoundly  ignorant  of 
the  distribution  of  the  various  races  and  creeds  in  the 
province  with  which  they  were  dealing. 

I  could  not,  of  course,  offer  any  opposition  to  a 
scheme  which  we  were  told  had  been  approved  by 
my  leader,  but  I  thought  it  right  distinctly  to  record 
my  conviction  that  if  we  pushed  our  demands  upon 


DESPATCH  281 

the  Porte  too  far  we  should  meet  with  an  insuperable 
refusal  to  entertain  them;  and  I  afterwards  repre- 
sented this  still  more  strongly  to  Lord  Salisbury, 
and,  finding  that  I  failed  to  move  him,  I  at  last  deter- 
mined fully  to  express  my  views  in  a  despatch  to 
Lord  Derby;  but  before  forwarding  it  I  sent  the  draft 
to  Lord  Salisbury,  who,  representing  how  embarrassing 
it  would  be  to  the  Government  to  receive  contra- 
dictory reports  from  their  two  Plenipotentiaries, 
urged  me  not  to  send  it;  and  in  consequence  of  this 
appeal  I  reluctantly,  and  perhaps  weakly,  consented 
to  keep  it  back.  Thus,  the  despatch  never  became 
an  official  document,  but  I  give  it  here,  as  showing 
both  that  I  had  correctly  judged  the  situation,  and 
that  I  had  done  all  that  I  possibly  could  to  open 
Lord  Salisbury's  eyes  to  it. 

Constantinople, 

December  17,  1876. 

"  My  Lord, 

"  One  of  two  advantages  was  to  be  hoped  for 
from  the  Conference. 

"  War  between  Turkey  and  Russia  might  be  averted 
by  an  agreement  being  come  to  between  the  Powers 
and  the  Porte  respecting  the  arrangements  to  be  made 
for  the  security  of  the  provincial  populations.  Should 
the  Conference  fail  in  this  great  primary  object,  and 
a  rupture  between  the  two  countries  become  inevit- 
able, good  would  still  be  done  if  a  resort  to  force  by 
Russia  could  be  shown  not  to  be  justified  by  any  act 
of  Turkey. 

"  The  proceedings  of  the  preliminary  meetings  of 
the  Plenipotentiaries  give  little  expectation  of  either 
of  these  advantages  being  realised. 

"  The  proposals  upon  which  they  seem  about  to 
agree  appear  to  me  to  be  in  excess  of  the  bases 
communicated  to  the  Porte,  and  in  excess  of  what  the 
Porte  is  at  all  likely  to  consent  to. 


282      CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE     [1876 

"  The  basis  of  the  reforms  to  be  required  for  the 
provinces  was  stated  to  the  Porte  to  be  the  adoption 
of  a  system  of  local  or  administrative  autonomy 
which  should  give  the  population  '  some  control  ' 
over  their  local  affairs,  and  guarantees  against  the 
exercise  of  arbitrary  authority,  while  at  the  same  time 
the  independence  of  the  Imperial  Government  was 
to  be  respected. 

'  Nothing  could  be  more  reasonable  than  this 
proposal,  and  by  a  strict  adherence  to  it  there  would 
be  a  fair  prospect  of  obtaining  the  acquiescence  of  the 
Porte;  but  the  projects  which  are  being  elaborated 
by  the  Plenipotentiaries  go  so  much  further  that  they 
are  likely  to  be  rejected  as  contrary  to  the  basis  agreed 
upon. 

"  We  may  calculate  on  the  Porte  objecting  that  it 
is  not  a  partial  but  a  nearly  unlimited  control  which 
is  given  to  the  populations,  or  more  properly  to  the 
Christian  portion  of  it,  which  will,  moreover,  be 
placed  under  the  direct  protection  of  the  Powers. 

"  There  are  other  provisions  in  the  proposal  to  be 
submitted  to  the  Porte  about  Bulgaria,  to  which  I 
should  anticipate  determined  resistance  by  the 
Turkish  Government,  and  which  I  myself  consider 
open  to  the  most  serious  objection. 

"  I  allude  especially  to  the  creation  of  a  Christian 
Militia.  In  a  country  recently  in  insurrection,  for 
which,  although  promptly  repressed,  the  seeds  of  a 
formidable  and  general  movement  had  been  laid,  and 
where  the  revolutionary  committees  of  Bucharest  and 
Moscow  exert  immense  influence,  I  can  hardly  imagine 
a  measure  more  fraught  with  danger  than  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  militia  drawn  exclusively  from  that 
class  of  the  population  in  which  the  disaffection  exists, 
and  among  whom  the  late  excesses  of  the  Turks 
have  roused  a  feeling  of  bitter  hatred. 

"  The  exertions  of  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury  have 
been  successful  in  obtaining  the  omission  of  the  clause 


DESPATCH  283 

by  which  General  Ignatiew  proposed  that  the  Turkish 
troops  should  be  confined  to  the  fortresses,  or,  in  other 
words,  be  excluded  from  the  whole  of  the  country 
south  of  the  Balkans  where  no  fortresses  exist;  but, 
highly  important  as  this  concession  is,  we  must  doubt 
whether  the  Porte  will  consider  it  sufficient  to  justify 
them  in  venturing  to  create  an  exclusively  Christian 
Militia. 

'  The  introduction  of  Christians  into  the  gendar- 
merie or  police,  and  measures  for  their  gradual  in- 
corporation into  the  army,  are  points  to  be  insisted 
upon,  which  would  appear  to  meet  your  Lordship's 
instructions  without  the  probability  of  encountering 
any  insuperable  objections  on  the  part  of  the  Porte. 

"  The  guarantee  contemplated  by  Her  Majesty's 
Government  for  the  execution  of  the  reforms  appeared 
to  be  a  diplomatic  veto — as  a  temporary  arrangement 
— upon  the  nomination  of  the  Valis,  judges  and  higher 
officials,  unless  the  appointment  of  proper  adminis- 
trators could  be  ensured  in  some  preferable  manner, 
such,  for  instance,  as  by  means  of  an  international 
commission  such  as  that  which  was  employed  in  the 
affair  of  the  Lebanon.  The  Plenipotentiaries,  how- 
ever, adopt  the  suggestion  of  an  international  com- 
mission, not  as  an  alternative  guarantee  in  the  place 
of  a  diplomatic  veto,  but  as  one  in  addition  to  it; 
and  there  would  besides  be  the  further  condition  of 
the  presence  of  a  foreign  force,  although  one  which 
could  certainly  not  be  regarded  as  an  occupying 
army  likely  to  cause  political  danger. 

"  I  have  already  informed  your  Lordship  of  the 
apparent  determination  of  the  Porte  not.  to  grant 
special  autonomic  institutions  to  the  Slav  Provinces 
alone,  but  I  have  thought  it  my  duty  now  to 
point  out  to  Her  Majesty's  Government  such  of 
the  proposed  arrangements  as  are,  in  my  opinion, 
most  likely  to  confirm  the  Porte  in  its  resolution 
of  resistance. 


281       CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE     [1876 

'  Much  of  what  is  most  valuable  in  the  proposals 
would  be  easily  engrafted  into  the  Law  of  the  Vilayets 
without  any  violent  disturbance  of  existing  arrange- 
ments, and  without  the  undoubted  drawback  of 
granting  special  institutions  to  a  particular  race 
protected  by  a  great  and  encroaching  Power. 

"  There  would  necessarily  have  to  be  special 
temporary  guarantees  for  the  execution  of  the  reforms 
in  those  provinces  with  which  alone  we  have  at  present 
to  deal;  but,  although  there  will  be  great  difficulty 
made  by  the  Porte,  the  more  moderate  we  make  them 
the  better  will  be  our  chance  of  overcoming  the 
resistance. 

"  The  formal  character  of  the  preliminary  meetings 
of  the  Plenipotentiaries,  and  their  prolonged  duration, 
have  produced  the  effect  that  was  foreseen  on  public 
opinion,  and  have  increased  the  distrust  with  which 
the  Conference  has  been  regarded  from  the  first,  and 
the  determination  to  resist  proposals  which  it  is 
believed  we  are  about  to  submit  authoritatively  for 
the  acceptance  of  the  Porte. 

"  I  believe  that  I  have  already  stated  to  your 
Lordship  how  far  I  am  from  sharing  General  Ignatiew's 
opinion  that  the  Porte  will  accept  anything  unani- 
mously insisted  upon  by  the  Powers.  I  may  be 
mistaken ;  but  when,  as  I  have  very  often  done  of  late, 
I  have  said  to  any  of  the  Turks  that  if  they  rejected 
the  proposals  which  we  supported  in  their  own  in- 
terests they  would  be  left  alone  in  the  face  of  Russia, 
their  calm  answer  that  they  must  meet  the  danger 
as  they  can,  and  make  the  best  resistance  in  their 
power,  appears  to  indicate  a  resolution  not  likely  to 
be  shaken. 

"  If,  when  the  Conference  meets,  a  disposition  is 
shown  by  the  Plenipotentiaries  to  take  fairly  into 
consideration  the  proposals  which  the  Porte  may  bring 
forward  for  securing  to  the  populations  the  reforms 
required  for   them,  we  may  meet  with  a  spirit  of 


PRELIMINARY  MEETINGS  285 

concession  leading  to  a  satisfactory  result;  but  if,  on 
the  contrary,  we  insist  too  strongly  upon  the  adoption 
of  the  plans  we  have  ourselves  elaborated,  there  is 
more  than  a  probability  of  our  efforts  to  effect  an 
arrangement  proving  vain. 

"  The  result  must  therefore  depend  upon  whether 
the  Russian  Ambassador  will  give  way  sufficiently 
to  confine  the  demands  within  what  the  Turks 
consider  a  fair  interpretation  of  the  bases  of  the 
Conference." 

Nine  formal  meetings  of  the  foreign  representatives, 
a  Conference  in  all  but  the  name,  were  held  at  the 
Russian  Embassy,  without  the  participation  of  the 
Turks,  who  were  incensed  at  finding  that  in  their  own 
capital  an  elaborate  scheme  for  the  administration  of 
their  provinces  was  being  prepared  by  their  arch- 
enemy General  Ignatiew,  who,  with  the  co-operation 
of  Lord  Salisbury,  took  the  whole  task  upon  himself, 
as  it  seemed  to  be  understood  that  the  other  Pleni- 
potentiaries would  assent  to  all  that  was  settled  by 
those  two. 

At  the  last  meeting  the  General  announced  the 
result  of  his  labours  and  produced  what  he  designated 
as  the  irreducible  minimum  (minimum  irreductible) 
"  of  the  demands,  the  acceptance  of  which,"  he  said, 
"  his  Government  felt  sure  all  the  Christian  repre- 
sentatives would  consider  themselves  bound  in  honour 
to  impose  upon  the  Turks."  There  was  to  be  no 
question  of  negotiation;  the  scheme  thus  framed 
was  to  be  flung  before  the  Porte  to  be  swallowed  by 
it  in  full,  or  rejected  at  its  peril;  and  when  the  full 
Conference  met  under  the  presidency  of  the  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  this  mode  of  proceeding  was 
pitilessly  adhered  to.  The  objections  raised  by  the 
Turks  to  various  parts  of  the  proposals  were  barely 
listened  to,  and  they  were  browbeaten  to  such  a  degree 
as  to  scandalise  some  of  our  colleagues,  who  came 


286       CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE     [1876 

round  to  me  and  whispered  that  they  now  saw  that 
we  had  gone  too  far,  and  that  they  would  have  done 
better  to  listen  to  me. 

A  meeting  was  held  at  the  Russian  Embassy  the 
next  day  to  consider  the  answer  to  be  returned  to 
the  objections  to  the  "  irreducible  minimum  "  put 
forward  by  the  Turkish  Plenipotentiaries,  and  I 
determined  to  make  another  attempt  to  obtain  the 
adoption  of  a  more  conciliatory  course  of  action, 
which  I  recorded  in  a  despatch  written  the  same  day. 
"  Believing,"  I  said,  "  that  I  possessed  a  greater 
knowledge  of  the  character  of  the  Turks  and  their 
present  disposition  than  most  of  my  colleagues,  I 
thought  it  right  very  freely  to  express  my  opinion 
that  if  we  were  still  to  hope  to  bring  the  labours  of 
the  Conference  to  a  satisfactory  issue,  we  should  not 
confine  ourselves  to  an  endeavour  to  refute  the  ob- 
jections of  the  Porte;  but  that  we  must  show  a  willing- 
ness so  far  to  modify  our  proposals  as  to  bring  them 
back  more  strictly  within  what  the  Turkish  Govern- 
ment will  consider  a  fair  interpretation  of  the  bases 
on  which  the  Conference  had  been  proposed  to  them. 
I  was  not  criticising  the  merits  of  the  proposals  them- 
selves; but  we  must  remember  that  the  success  of 
the  Conference,  of  which  we  need  not  despair,  depended 
upon  their  acceptance  by  the  Turks,  which  I  believed 
could  only  be  obtained  by  sufficient  modifications  to 
bring  them  within  what  the  Porte  would  regard  as 
the  limits  of  the  programme."  This  speech  was 
little  to  the  taste  of  General  Ignatiew,  who  looked 
very  glum  while  I  spoke,  but  on  this  occasion  so  many 
of  our  colleagues  rallied  to  my  views  that  he  saw  the 
necessity  of  giving  way,  and  the  result  of  the  meeting 
was  that  he  drew  up  for  presentation  to  the  Turkish 
Plenipotentiaries  another  document,  termed  by  him 
the  '  Quintessence,"  which  in  appearance  was  very 
different  from  the  irreducible  minimum  they  had  been 
called    upon    to    accept    without    modification.     It 


INTERVIEW  WITH  MIDHAT  287 

omitted  all  mention  of  several  of  the  demands  to 
which  the  Turks  had  most  strongly  objected.  The 
proposed  new  territorial  divisions  affecting  five  of  the 
existing  Vilayets,  the  admission  of  a  body  of  foreign 
troops  under  the  orders  of  an  international  Com- 
mission, and  the  confinement  of  the  imperial  forces 
to  the  fortresses  and  principal  towns,  which  were 
among  the  most  important  features  of  the  original 
project,  were  all  passed  over  in  silence,  and  the 
functions  of  the  proposed  international  Commission 
were  reduced  to  insignificance  compared  to  those 
assigned  to  them  in  the  "irreducible  minimum," 
by  which,  supported  by  a  force  of  8,000  foreign 
troops,  they  were  to  have  a  complete  control  over 
the  country. 

Thinking  that  I  might  have  more  influence  at  the 
Porte  than  other  members  of  the  Conference,  Lord 
Salisbury  sent  the  paper  to  me,  begging  me  to  urge 
its  acceptance  on  the  Grand  Vizier,  which,  seeing  in 
it  the  basis  for  an  understanding,  I  willingly  con- 
sented to  do,  and  had  an  interview  with  Midhat 
Pasha  that  was  far  from  discouraging.  He  practically 
accepted  the  schemes  of  reorganisation  as  stated  in 
the  paper,  and  I  was  able  to  report  that  the  only 
really  important  points  upon  which  difficulty  seemed 
likely  to  be  encountered  were  those  relating  to  the 
nomination  of  the  Governors-General  and  the  inter- 
national Commission;  and  there  was  no  reason  why, 
with  a  little  patient  negotiation,  either  of  these  should 
prove  insuperable,  for  Midhat  had  shown  himself 
not  indisposed  to  consent  to  temporary  Commissions 
such  as  had  been  suggested  by  our  Government, 
though  he  would  not  agree  to  the  permanent  estab- 
lishment of  a  foreign  Commission  in  a  Turkish 
province.  But  patience  was  not  one  of  the  virtues 
of  the  Conference,  nor  was  negotiation  its  mode  of 
proceeding,  and  Midhat  Pasha's  answer  was  con- 
sidered as  an  absolute  rejection  of  its  demands;  and, 


288      CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE     [1876 

after  one  or  two  more  sittings,  the  Conference,  unable 
to  extort  the  unconditional  acceptance  it  insisted  on, 
announced  its  approaching  dissolution,  still  con- 
fiding in  General  lgnatiew's  assurance  that  this 
threat  would  speedily  bring  the  Turks  to  their  knees ; 
and  great  was  the  consternation  of  the  Plenipoten- 
tiaries when  nothing  of  the  kind  occurred,  and  no 
attempt  was  made  to  detain  them;  while  some,  and 
especially  the  very  able  French  representative,  Count 
Chaudordy,  loudly  declared  that  it  was  shameful  to 
refuse  a  hopeful  negotiation  which  might  avert  the 
war  that  could  now  be  foreseen. 

The  ninth  meeting  of  the  Conference  took  place 
on  January  20,  when  Safvet  Pasha,  its  President 
and  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  made  a  speech 
enumerating  all  the  demands  that  the  Porte  were 
ready  to  accede  to,  which  left  only  the  two  respecting 
the  nomination  of  Governors-General  and  the  inter- 
national Commissions,  upon  which  any  difficulty 
remained,  and  with  regard  to  the  last  the  Porte  was 
willing  to  adopt  the  proposal  of  Count  Andrassy  of 
two  Commissions  composed  of  equal  numbers  of 
Christians  and  Mussulmans,  freely  elected  by  the 
inhabitants  of  the  provinces;  but,  hopeful  as  this 
offer  was,  the  leading  members  of  the  Conference 
were  too  deeply  committed  to  the  principle  of  coercion 
that  had  been  followed  to  be  able  to  bring  themselves 
to  adopt  a  more  conciliatory  course. 

The  first  object  for  which  the  Conference  had  been 
called  was  stated,  as  I  have  said,  to  be  the  conclusion 
of  peace  with  Servia  and  Montenegro,  which  might 
easily  have  been  settled  in  half  an  hour;  for  Servia 
would  gladly  have  accepted  peace  on  the  basis  of  the 
status  quo  ante,  which  Turkey  was  prepared  to  agree 
to,  and  Montenegro  would  have  been  well  satisfied 
with  the  cessions  of  territory  that  Midhat  was  ready 
to  make  to  it,  but  no  attempt  whatever  was  made  to 
secure  this  result.    The  fact  of  the  matter  was  that 


CONVOCATION  OF  GRAND  COUNCIL     289 

the  Conference  had  so  exclusively  devoted  itself  to  a 
scheme  of  administration  for  Bulgaria  that  it  had 
lost  sight  of  everything  else,  and  when  it  announced 
its  dissolution  it  was  found  that  the  question  of  peace, 
the  first  object  for  which  the  Conference  was  convoked, 
had  been  forgotten.  The  omission  was  so  striking 
that,  to  my  own  knowledge,  there  was  one  Govern- 
ment, the  Italian,  and  there  may  have  been  others, 
which  thought  it  right  to  record  an  expression  of 
their  regret  that  the  Conference  should  have  separated 
without  accomplishing  this  great  object,  which  was 
so  manifestly  within  its  reach;  but  General  Ignatiew 
went  his  way  rejoicing,  for  the  continuance  of  a  state 
of  war  between  Turkey  and  the  Principalities  was 
eminently  favourable  to  Russia  in  the  hostilities  upon 
which  she  was  herself  resolved. 

Two  days  before  the  last  Conference  the  Porte, 
according  to  custom  on  very  serious  occasions,  con- 
voked a  Grand  Council  of  the  most  important 
personages  of  the  Empire,  to  the  number  of  above 
two  hundred;  comprising,  besides  the  Mahometans, 
representatives  of  all  the  different  Christian  com- 
munities, the  Patriarchs  being  represented  by  their 
delegates,  in  order  that  they  might  be  informed  of, 
and  consulted  upon,  the  proposals  submitted  by  the 
Conference.  It  was  afterwards  pretended  by  the 
Russian  party  that  the  Grand  Vizier  had  laid  the 
question  before  the  Council  in  such  a  way  as  to  ensure 
its  rejection;  but  this  assertion,  like  most  of  those 
emanating  from  the  same  source,  was  as  nearly  as 
possible  the  reverse  of  the  truth.  I  was  intimately 
acquainted  with  many  of  the  members,  both  Christian 
and  Mussulman,  and  as  they  one  and  all  gave  me 
substantially  the  same  account  there  could  not  be  a 
doubt  of  its  accuracy.  They  said  that  Midhat  Pasha 
had  opened  the  proceedings  in  a  speech  of  such  pacific 
tendency,  and  had  pointed  out  in  such  strong  language 
the  dangers  to  which  the  Empire  would  be  exposed  by 

20 


290      CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE      [1876 

a  war  with  Russia,  that  murmurs  of  disapprobation 
were  raised  against  him,  and  without  a  single  dis- 
sentient voice  the  Council  pronounced  an  unequivocal 
rejection  of  the  proposals  concerning  the  nomination 
of  Governors  and  the  international  Commissions, 
which,  it  was  declared,  must  be  rejected  at  all  hazards, 
however  great  these  might  be. 

The  Council  unquestionably  represented  the 
universal  feeling  of  the  populations,  Mussulman  and 
Christian,  between  whom  there  was  exhibited  a 
cordiality  and  good  fellowship  such  as  there  had 
probably  never  been  an  example  of  in  the  history  of 
the  Turkish  Empire.  In  the  course  of  the  discussion 
a  striking  appeal  to  the  Grand  Vizier  was  made  by 
the  representative  of  one  of  the  Christian  churches, 
with  the  warm  approval  of  all  the  others.  He  said 
that  as  the  decision  to  be  come  to  might  lead  to  war 
it  was  essential  to  know  the  character  to  be  given  to 
that  war.  If  it  was  to  be  a  religious  war  the  Christian 
populations  could  not  be  expected  to  sympathise 
with  it;  but  if,  on  the  contrary,  it  was  to  be  a  war 
for  the  honour  and  independence  of  the  Empire,  in 
which  they  all  felt  an  equal  interest,  then  the  Christians 
would  join  with  their  Mussulman  fellow-subjects. 
The  scene  was  described  to  me  as  very  impressive; 
the  speech  was  enthusiastically  applauded  by  the 
members  of  the  Ulema,  who  called  out:  ''  You  go  to 
the  Church  and  we  go  to  the  Mosque,  but  we  all 
worship  the  same  God;  we  are  subjects  of  the  same 
Empire,  and  mean  to  live  together  as  brothers." 

I  may  mention  as  a  further  proof  of  the  harmony 
then  prevailing  that,  after  the  breaking  up  of  the 
Conference,  when  it  was  universally  known  that  I 
had  been  strongly  opposed  to  the  demands  of  the 
Russian  Ambassador,  who  professed  to  have  been 
acting  solely  in  the  interest  of  the  Christian  popula- 
tions, the  heads  of  all  the  Christian  Churches  in  the 
Empire,  the  Greek  Patriarch,  the  Armenian  Orthodox 


LOED  SALISBURY'S  MISTAKE  291 

Patriarch,  the  Armenian  Catholicos  Patriarch,  and  the 
Vekil  of  the  native  Protestant  Church,  as  well  as  the 
leading  Mussulmans,  sent  me  addresses  conveying  the 
expression  of  their  regret  at  my  departure  and  of  their 
warm  recognition  of  my  services.  It  was  a  sufficient 
refutation  of  the  accusation  so  often  made  against 
me  by  English  Turcophobes  that  my  sympathy  for 
the  Mahometans  was  so  strong  as  to  make  me  in- 
different to  the  grievances  of  the  Christians,  whose 
attitude  on  this  occasion  Mr.  Gladstone  told  me  he 
considered  "  disgraceful." 

That  Lord  Salisbury  should  have  come  to  the  belief 
that  the  Turks  would  not  venture  to  refuse  anything 
pressed  upon  them  by  both  England  and  Russia, 
although  a  fatal,  was  far  from  an  unnatural  mistake, 
in  one  ignorant  of  their  character  and  of  the  temper 
prevailing  among  them;  but  it  is  not  so  easy  to 
understand  how  he  can  have  brought  himself  to  put 
himself  so  entirely  into  General  Ignatiew's  hands 
and  to  accept  all  his  proposals  without  any  inde- 
pendent inquiry  as  to  their  being  suitable  to  the 
situation.  Knowing  my  views  upon  the  subject 
when  he  decided  to  reverse  the  policy  hitherto 
followed  by  our  Government,  he  no  doubt  found 
himself  in  a  position  that  was  not  free  from  embarrass- 
ment; for  I  was  the  Queen's  Ambassador,  associated 
with  him  as  second  Plenipotentiary  to  the  Conference, 
the  instructions  of  our  Government  being  addressed 
to  me  as  well  as  to  him,  and  of  my  right  to  be  con- 
sulted on  every  step  to  be  taken  there  could  be  no 
possible  doubt.  He  was,  however,  clearly  bound 
to  tell  me  frankly  and  openly  the  course  he  had 
resolved  upon,  and,  although  I  should  have  tried  to 
dissuade  him,  I  should  not  have  questioned  his 
right,  as  first  Plenipotentiary,  to  take  the  line  that 
seemed  to  him  the  most  desirable,  and,  with  my 
knowledge  of  the  circumstances,  I  should  have  been 
able  to  furnish  him  with  arguments  to  resist  the  most 


292       CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE      [1876 

objectionable  of  General  Ignatiew's  proposals.  But 
this  he  did  not  do;  and  when  I  found  myself  without 
one  word  of  explanation,  simply  ignored  as  if  I  did 
not  exist,  while  projects  were  being  elaborated  of 
which  I  knew  nothing,  but  to  which  I  was  nominally 
to  be  a  party,  it  was  not  altogether  easy  to  bear  it 
with  equanimity,  and  if  I  had  merely  consulted  my 
own  inclination  I  would  at  once  have  escaped  from  the 
false  position  in  which  I  was  placed  by  taking  the 
leave  of  absence  for  which  I  was  pining;  but  as  this 
would  have  been  taken  as  a  public  declaration  of 
disagreement  with  Lord  Salisbury,  which  would 
encourage  the  Turks  to  resist  his  demands,  I  con- 
sidered it  my  most  distasteful  duty  to  remain  on  to 
the  bitter  end. 

The  success  of  the  Russian  Ambassador  was  com- 
plete. He  had  succeeded  in  getting  the  impossible 
demands  he  had  made  on  the  Turkish  Government 
sanctioned  by  the  Plenipotentiaries  of  all  the  Great 
Powers,  and,  upon  their  rejection  by  the  Porte, 
Russia  was  left  free  to  make  the  war  for  which  she 
had  been  anxious  to  find  a  pretext  without  the  danger 
of  protest  from  any  quarter. 

Disastrous  as  that  war  was  to  Turkey,  it  may  be 
confidently  asserted  that  the  conditions  to  which  she 
had  to  submit  under  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  were  far 
less  fatal  to  her  than  would  have  been  the  acceptance 
of  the  Conference  proposals,  by  which  the  whole  of  the 
Sultan's  European  dominions  would  have  been  placed 
under  international  Commissions  in  which  Russia 
must  necessarily  have  been  supreme. 

As  soon  as  the  Conference  was  over  I  went  home, 
where  I  found  the  Cabinet  divided  into  two  parties, 
of  which  the  one  adhered  to  Lord  Salisbury  while  the 
other  strongly  disapproved  of  the  course  he  had 
followed;  and  neither  Lord  Beaconsfield  nor  Lord 
Derby  concealed  from  me  how  thoroughly  they  had 
shared  my  views. 


RETIREMENT  293 

About  three  months  later  it  was  thought  that  the 
Embassy  ought  no  longer  to  be  left  under  a  Charge 
d 'Affaires,  and  Lord  Derby  asked  if  I  felt  well  enough 
to  resume  my  duties  at  Constantinople,  which  he 
wished,  though  it  was  objected  to  by  a  section  of  the 
Cabinet.  He  so  fully  recognised  my  right  to  go  back 
if  I  wished  it  that  he  pledged  himself  to  resign  if  he 
could  not  carry  the  point,  even  if  it  might  break  up 
the  Government.  Nothing  could  possibly  be  hand- 
somer than  the  support  he  was  ready  to  give  me,  for 
no  one  was  more  fond  of  office  than  Lord  Derby; 
but  I  told  him  that,  however  keenly  I  should  feel  the 
slight  of  being  superseded,  I  would  not,  out  of  personal 
considerations,  insist  on  a  right  that  might  have  such 
serious  public  consequences,  and  it  was  ultimately 
arranged  that  Sir  H.  Layard  should  be  sent  on  a 
special  and  temporary  Embassy  to  Constantinople, 
while  I  continued  to  hold  the  post  of  permanent 
Ambassador  to  the  Porte,  the  duties  of  which  my 
health  really  made  me  hardly  fit  to  resume.  In  this 
way  the  appearance  of  my  having  been  set  aside 
was  to  some  extent  saved,  but  the  sacrifice  that  I 
had  made  was  nevertheless  a  great  one. 

I  had,  however,  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that 
the  British  residents  in  Turkey  would  have  welcomed 
my  return;  for,  far  from  joining  in  the  attacks  that 
had  been  lavished  upon  me  in  England,  they  went  out 
of  their  way  to  convey  to  me  their  dissent  from  them, 
and,  before  I  left  Constantinople  in  January  1877,  a 
representative  deputation  presented  me  with  an 
address  in  which  they  alluded  to  the  reflections  that 
had  been  cast  upon  me,  which  they  declared  "  my 
life  and  character,  as  they  had  known  them  for  ten 
years,  refuted  and  belied/'  This  address  was  signed 
by  all  the  respectable  British  residents,  without  an 
exception  that  I  am  aware  of;  and  some  of  the  principal 
men  of  the  native  Christians,  Greek  and  Armenian, 
to  whose  welfare  I  had  been  represented  as  so  in- 


294      CONSTANTINOPLE  CONFERENCE      [1877 

different,  asked  to  be  permitted  to  join  my  fellow- 
countrymen  in  the  testimonial. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  year  the  Embassy  at  Vienna 
became  vacant  and  I  was  appointed  to  it  by  Lord 
Derby,  who,  however,  resigned  a  few  months  later, 
and  was  succeeded  at  the  Foreign  Office  by  Lord 
Salisbury,  so  that  I  found  myself  called  upon  to  serve 
under  a  Minister  who  had  shown  me  at  Constantinople 
such  a  marked  want  of  confidence  and  consideration 
as  to  make  it  a  question  whether  I  could  do  so  with 
credit  to  myself  or  advantage  to  the  public.  But  he 
at  once  put  my  mind  at  rest  on  that  subject.  In  the 
interval  that  had  elapsed  since  the  fatal  Conference 
his  eyes  had  been  opened  to  the  true  situation,  and 
he  was  now  intent  on  thwarting  the  designs  of  Russia, 
which  at  Constantinople  he  had  done  so  much  to 
further:  our  views  were  in  perfect  agreement  and, 
no  symptom  of  distrust  remaining,  our  relations  were 
as  cordial  and  confidential  as  possible  during  the  time 
he  continued  in  office. 

When  I  was  appointed  to  Vienna  the  great  anxiety 
of  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  for  the  re-establishment 
of  the  agreement  on  Eastern  politics  that  used  to 
prevail  between  the  two  Governments  till  it  was  put 
an  end  to  by  the  Drei-Kaiser  Bund,  to  which  object 
all  my  efforts  were  to  be  directed,  and  I  was  ulti- 
mately entirely  successful.  But  our  improving  rela- 
tions received  a  severe  check  when,  in  1880,  Lord 
Beaconsfield  had  to  make  way  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  who, 
in  his  Midlothian  campaign,  had  been  denouncing  the 
Emperor  and  Austrian  Empire  in  such  violent  and 
offensive  language  as  would  have  made  it  impossible 
for  the  two  Governments  to  be  on  tolerable  terms  if 
Count  Karolyi  had  not  extorted  from  him  an  apology, 
very  gratifying  to  Austrian  amour  propre,  but  very 
humiliating  for  a  British  Prime  Minister. 

He  would  probably  have  been  glad  to  recall  me  at 
once,  for  he  had  been  loud  in  his  blame  of  my  pro- 


EETIEEMENT  295 

ceedings  at  Constantinople,  and  Turkish  affairs  were 
those  that  had  chiefly  to  be  treated  at  Vienna;  but, 
as  I  represented  the  policy  of  an  intimate  under- 
standing between  England  and  Austria,  he  could  not, 
at  that  moment,  venture  to  take  a  step  which  would 
be  understood  as  being  aimed  against  it,  and  so  I 
remained  on  for  a  couple  of  years  when,  at  the  end  of 
1883,  a  diplomatic  career  of  more  than  usual  interest 
was  brought  to  a  close. 


APPENDIX 

REMARKS  ON  LORD  SALISBURY'S  BIOGRAPHY 

These  Recollections  were  already  in  the  press  when  the  Life 
of  Lord  Salisbury  appeared,  and  his  letters  and  despatches 
on  the  Constantinople  Conference  call  for  some  comment  on 
the  part  of  the  Editor  of  this  book. 

Lord  Salisbury  was  evidently  much  perturbed  at  the 
prospect  of  failure  before  him  and,  unwilling  to  admit  that  he 
had  misjudged  the  Turkish  mentality  and  determination, 
persuaded  himself  and  endeavoured  to  persuade  others  that 
the  blame  of  the  failure  rested  on  Sir  Henry  Elliot's  shoulders. 
In  this  he  was  mistaken.  Though  immeasurably  General 
Ignatiew's  superior  in  intellect  as  well  as  in  principle,  he  was 
in  no  way  armed  to  meet  a  totally  unscrupulous  adversary 
whose  whole  life  had  been  passed  in  the  East,  and  whose 
energies  for  years  had  been  solely  concentrated  on  the 
advancement  of  Russian  interests  in  Turkey,  and  on  frustrat- 
ing any  progress  or  tendency  towards  liberty  in  that  unhappy 
country.  On  page  110,  vol.  ii.,  of  the  Life,  an  amusing 
account  is  given  of  the  General's  attempt  to  alter  on  the  map 
a  frontier  line  already  determined  on,  and  of  Lord  Salisbury's 
'  irritated  discomfort  "  until  the  General  beamed  on  him,  and 
exclaimed:  "  '  Monsieur  le  Marquis  est  si  fin— on  ne  peut  rien 
lui  cacher ! '  The  Englishman  threw  himself  back  in  an 
uncontrollable  burst  of  laughter,  in  which  both  embarrassment 
and  annoyance  vanished."  The  writer  does  not  perceive  that 
it  was  the  Russian  who  scored  in  this  encounter  of  wits.  His 
trick  had  been  detected;  for  that  he  cared  little,  though  he 
would  have  been  glad  if  it  had  succeeded;  but,  what  was  far 
more  important,  he  had,  by  a  dexterous  compliment,  con- 
firmed Lord  Salisbury  in  the  belief  that  he  was  his  equal  in 
diplomatic  craft. 

Writing  of  Ignatiew  and  Midhat  (p.  117),  Lord  Salisbury 
says:  "  They  are  the  biggest  pair  of  liars  to  be  found  in 
Europe,  but  I  am  inclined  (though  with  much  diffidence)  to 
think  that  Midhat  is  the  falser  of  the  two."  Lord  Salisbury 
would  have  had  some  difficulty  in  adducing  proofs  of  Midhat's 

296 


APPENDIX  297 

falsity,  but  he  utterly  disbelieved  in  the  possibility  of  reform- 
ing the  Turkish  Empire,  while  Midhat  implicitly  believed  in 
it.  His  life  had  been  spent  in  a  struggle  to  introduce  reforms 
in  the  Provinces  of  which  he  had  been  Governor,  and  his 
endeavours  had  been  repeatedly  frustrated  by  Ignatiew's 
intrigues,  which  caused  his  removal  whenever  the  contented 
condition  of  his  Vilayet  threatened  the  success  of  the 
Muscovite's  plans.  Unfortunately,  Ignatiew's  genial  manner 
and  amusing  companionship  were  attractive  to  Lord  Salisbury, 
whose  biographer  says:  "He  found  his  (Ignatiew's)  society 
indeed  a  refreshing  contrast  to  the  monotonous  correctitude  of 
his  more  orthodox  diplomatic  associates."  No  one,  however 
great  admirer  he  might  be  of  the  patriot  Midhat,  could  by 
any  stretch  of  imagination  find  him  "  refreshing  ";  he  lacked 
all  charm  of  manner. 

As  Sir  Henry  points  out  in  the  Recollections,  the  holding 
of  the  preliminary  Conference  meetings  from  which  the  Turks 
were  excluded  (a  distinct  violation  of  the  promise  made  to 
them  when  they  reluctantly  consented  to  a  Conference  being 
held),  almost  ensured  failure  from  the  first,  and  the  osten- 
tatious friendliness  shown  by  the  members  of  the  Special 
Mission  towards  the  Russian  Embassy,  coupled  with  their 
aloofness  and  cold  demeanour  towards  their  own  Embassy, 
which  was  known  to  be  friendly  to  Turkey,  did  not  dispose 
Turkish  patriots  to  feel  any  confidence  in  the  Envoy. 

Sir  Henry  had  written  to  Lord  Derby  before  Lord  Salis- 
bury's arrival,  suggesting  that  he  should  be  granted  leave  of 
absence,  as  he  was  the  last  person  who  ought  to  be  employed 
in  the  negotiation  if  there  was  to  be  any  departure  from  the 
policy  hitherto  followed  (p.  276),  and  Lord  Derby  had  begged 
him  to  remain.  Lord  Salisbury  can  hardly  have  been  ignorant 
of  this,  yet  we  find  him  (Life,  p.  117)  writing  on  December  26th, 
1876,  to  Lord  Derby  complaining  of  Sir  Henry's  attitude,  and 
three  days  later  (p.  118)  pressing  for  his  recall,  and  supporting 
his  demand  by  urging  that  Count  Corti,  Count  Zichy,  Baron 
Werther,  and  Count  Chaudordy  thought  it  desirable  !  Counts 
Corti  and  Zichy,  the  Italian  and  Austrian  Ambassadors,  were 
notoriously  the  tools  of  General  Ignatiew ;  Baron  Werther,  the 
German,  was  a  cypher ;  and  Count  Chaudordy,  the  able  French 
Envoy,  quite  unacquainted  with  the  East. 

On  December  17th  Sir  Henry  drafted  the  despatch  to  Lord 
Derby  (p.  281)  warning  him  of  the  consequences  likely  to 
follow  the  course  which  was  being  pursued,  and,  not  thinking 
it  fair  that  Lord  Salisbury  should  remain  in  ignorance  of  its 


298      LORD  SALISBURY'S  BIOGRAPHY 

contents,  submitted  it  to  him,  and  allowed  himself  to  be 
persuaded  to  abstain  from  sending  it,  so  that  his  view  of  the 
situation  remained,  unrecorded.  Lord  Salisbury  never  in- 
formed him  that  he  had  demanded  his  recall.  Though  stating 
always  that  "Sir  Henry  of  course  behaves  quite  loyally" 
and  he  is  "a  thorough  gentleman,"  he  complains  that  the 
same  is  not  the  case  with  his  entourage,  and  in  a  letter  to 
Lord  Carnarvon  (p.  120,  vol.  ii.),  alleges  that  "  all  the  rascally 
Levantines  who  stir  up  the  Porte  to  hold  out  cluster  round 
the  Embassy.  My  power  of  negotiation  is  almost  nil  so  long 
as  he  (Sir  Henry)  stays."  This  charge  against  the  Embassy 
was  unfounded,  and  one  can  only  suppose  that  Lord  Salisbury 
allowed  himself  to  be  misled  by  men  whose  aim  was  to  make 
mischief  between  the  two  Missions. 

On  January  11th,  1877,  Lord  Salisbury  wrote  (p.  121, 
vol.  ii.):  "  Our  influence  here  is  at  a  very  low  ebb."  This 
was  perfectly  true,  but  it  was  not  true  that  "  the  character 
of  our  Ambassador  has  no  doubt  done  something  to  ruin  our 
influence,  but  the  character  of  our  policy  has  done  more." 
Our  influence  in  Turkey  never  stood  higher  than  it  did  in  the 
spring  and  early  summer  of  1876;  the  untoward  agitation 
over  the  Bulgarian  Atrocities  was  the  first  blow  which  it 
received,  and  the  ostentatious  preference  shown  from  the  day 
of  their  arrival  by  the  Special  Embassy  for  the  Russian 
Embassy  over  their  own  contributed  largely  to  the  distrust 
with  which  the  Turks  regarded  Lord  Salisbury. 

On  page  95,  vol.  ii.,  of  the  Life  we  read:  "  With  his  gift 
for  rapidly  assimilating  information,  this  journey  must  be 
regarded  as  a  notable  step  in  Lord  Salisbury's  progress  from 
an  amateur's  interest  in  foreign  affairs  to  an  expert's  know- 
ledge of  them."  Just  so,  but  could  it  be  expected  that  a 
few  weeks'  training  should  enable  any  man,  however  gifted, 
to  meet  so  astute  a  diplomatist  as  General  Ignatiew  on  equal 
terms.  And  would  it  not  have  been  better  to  consult  Sir 
Henry  ?  Would  it  not  have  been  better  to  go  to  this  "  loyal 
gentleman ' '  for  information,  rather  than  always  to  seek  it 
from  the  man  who  had  been  for  years  his  chief  opponent,  and 
whose  standard  of  morality  had  been  shown  by  the  incident 
of  the  map  ? 

Sir  Henry  Elliot  and  Lord  Salisbury  worked  together  in 
perfect  amity  in  after  years:  they  were  both  men  who  put 
their  country's  interest  first,  but  in  those  very  interests  it  is 
much  to  be  regretted  that  the  affairs  of  the  Constantinople 
Conference  were  not  differently  managed. 


INDEX 


Aali  Pasha,  148,  184 
Abbott,  Vice- Consul  Henry,  222 
Acton,  Captain,  50 
Alfred,  Prince,  119,  145 
Andrassy,  Count,  201,  203,  209 
Amelia,  Queen,  114,  122,  136 
Antonelli,  Cardinal,  59 
Aquila,  Duke  of,  38,  45,  53 
Athens,  115 
Attendibili,  9,  12 
Aumale,  Due  d\  144 
Austria,  182,  200,  211 
Aziz,  Sultan  Abdul,  183 

deposition,  232 

death,  236,  240 

Balbi,  167 

Baring,  Walter,  his  report,  266 

Bashi-Bazouks,  261,  267 

Basilicata,  55 

Beaconsfield,  Earl  of,  vii.,  292 

Berlin  Memorandum,  109 

Bestemmia,  10 

Bismarck,  209 

Blunt,  Consul,  221 

Bonham,  Consul,  31 

Bosnia,  211,  213 

Bouree,  M.,  121 

Bourgoing,  Comte  de,  224 

Brenier,  M.,  23,  26,  31,  37,  66 

Brunnow,  Baron,  116 

Bulgaria,  atrocities,  vi.,  254-273 

Church,  180 
Buol  Schauenstein,  Count,  13 

Camorra,  8 
Capodistria,  114 
Capua,  80,  84,  102 
Castellamare,  29,  41,  49 
Cavour,  Count,  1,  18,  86 
Chaudordy,  Count,  297 
Cialdini,  General,  60,  102,  105 
Conference  of  Constantinople,  viii, 

274 
Constantinople,  fire,  192,  200 
Constitution,  Ionian,  139 
Constitution,  Turkish,  231,  250 
Council,  Turkish  Grand,  289 


Coundouriotti,  216 
Cowley,  Earl,  169 
Craven,  Augustus,  90 
Crete,  184 
Custozza,  179 

Dagger,  Comitato  of  the,  60,  67 

Daily  News,  vi.,  261 

Derby,  Earl  of,  209,  276,  293 

Detained  despatch,  vi. 

Dickson,  Dr.,  236 

Dictator  (Garibaldi),  53,  85 

Draft  despatch,  281,  Appendix,  297 

Drouyn  de  Lhuys,  144,  170 

Dumas,  Alexandre,  78 

Dunn,  86 

Dupuis,  Vice-Consul,  vii,  259 

Egypt,  188 

Emperor  Alexander  II.,  181 
Emperor  Francis  Joseph,  188,  203 
Emperor  Louis  Napoleon,  22,  172 
Empress  Eugenie,  188,  191 
Exarchate,  Bulgarian,  181 
Excursionists,  95,  99 

Farini,  104,  106 
Ferdinand  II.,  "  Bomba,"  1,  4 
Fire  at  Constantinople,  102,  200 
Francis  II.,  King,  4,  6,  68,  101 
Francis, Sir  Philip,  vii 
Freeman  (historian),  271 
Fuad  Pasha,  183 

Gallenga,  67,  70 

Garibaldi,  18,  28,68,  72,  111 

George  I.,  King,  139,  167 

Goodwin,  Consul,  39 

Gortchakoff,  Prince,  116,  181,  209 

Greece,  114,  170 

Hamid,  Sultan  Abdul.  248,  278 
Hassan  Khairullah,  236 
Hassan  Tcherkess,  245 
Herzegovina,  201,  211 
Higgins,  Matt.,  12 
Hobart  Pasha,  185 
Hudson,  Sir  James,  76 
Hussein  Avni  Pasha,  232,  244 


299 


300 


INDEX 


Ignatiew,    General,    181,   186,   257 

Appendix,  296 
Ionian  Islands,  130,  139,  152 
Ismail  Pasha,  Khedive,  189 
Izzeddin,  Prince  Youssouf,  231 

James,  Edwin,  77,  80 
Januarius,  Saint,  14,  85 

Lamarmora,  General,  176 
Lanioriciere,  General,  60 
Layard,  Sir  Henry,  293 
Lazzaroni,  27,  40 
Leidersdorf,  Dr.,  248 
Lesseps,  Ferdinand  de,  188,  191 
Leuchtenberg,  Prince  of,  116 
Liddon,  Canon,  262,  265 
Lissa,  179 
Llanover,  Lord,  77 

MacColl,  Canon  Malcolm,  262,  265 

Mahmoud  Nedim  Pasha,   18 1',  231 

Malaret,  Baron  de,  175 

Mamiani,  150 

Manna,  24 

Martino,  De,  27,  44,  66 

Mavrocordato,  160 

Mavromichalis,  151 

Mazzini,  8,  81,  92 

Mehemet  Rushdi  Pasha,  231,  247 

Memorandum,  Berlin,  209 

Midhat  Pasha,  227,  232,  Appendix 

Milano,  Ages'ilao,  87 
Millingen,  Dr.,  237 
Minghetti,  Marco,  173 
Montenegro,  210,  215,  263 
Mundy,  Admiral,  76,  110 
Murad,  Sultan,  232 
Musurus  Pasha,  241 

Naples,  1-113 
Napoleon  I.,  139 
Napoleon,  Louis,  1,  22 
Nauplia,  114 
Neapolitan  navy,  75 

Obrenovitch  dynasty,  182 
Otho,  King,  114,  127,  136 

Palmerston,  Viscount,  5,  141,  188 
-randola,  12 
Peard,  71,  98 
Pears,  Sir  Edwin,  vii. 
Perponcher,  Count,  31 
Persano,  Admiral,  19,  36,  70 
Photiades  Bey,  121,  133,  147 
Pius  IX.,  Pope,  106,  171 


Prokesch  Osten,  Baron,  204 
Protecting  powers,  139 

Queen  Amelia,  114,  122,  136 
Queen  Mother,  6,  51 
Queen  of  Naples,  89 

Rarey,  96 

Reform   Movement,  Turkish,   227, 

Ricasoli,  Baron,  177 
Rocca,  General  della,  175 
Rodcck,  Count,  208 
Rollin,  Ledru,  82 
Romano,  Liborio,  65 
Roumania,  182 
Russell,  Lord  John,  5 

despatck,  16,  108 

instructions,  141 

letter,  158 

Safvet  Pasha,  288 

Salerno,  71 

Salisbury,   Marquess   of,   276,  278, 

291,  296,  Appendix,  296-298 
Salonica  murders,  219 
Sardinian  flag,  70 
Savoy,  14,  25 
Servia,  128,  210,215 
Seymour,  Sir  Hamilton,  119 
Softas,  231 
St.  Maur,  Lord,  95 
Suez  Canal,  188 
Syracuse,  Count  of,  43,  61 

Thouvenel,  31,  117 
Tinan,  Barbier  de,  105 
Torella,  Prince,  15 
Trani,  Count  of,  37,  45 
Tricoupi,  127 
Turin,  171-178 
Turkey,  181-295 

Ulema,  290 

Victor  Emmanuel,  King,  22,  70,  80 
Villafranca,  Treaty  of,  25 
Villamarina,  24,  52,  58,  74 

Wendlandt,  129,  131 

Werther,  Baron,  206,  226,  Ap- 
pendix, 297 

William  of  Denmark,  Prince,  139, 
163,  166 

Yonine,  Consul- General,  207 

Zichy,  Count  F.,  205,  Appendix,  297 


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